Famous American belles of the nineteenth century

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Famous American Belles

of the

Nineteenth Century

NIVERS ITY OFMAS

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Emily Marshall

(Mrs. William Foster Otis)

From portrait by Chester Harding

Famous American

Belles of the
Nineteenth Century

By
Virginia Xatnall Peacock

ILLUSTRATED

Philadelphia (^ London

J. B. Lippincott Company

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Copyright, 1900

BY
J. B. LiPPINCOTT COMPANy

ELtCTROTYPED AND PRINTED BY J. B. LIPPINCOTT COMPANY, PHILADELPHIA, U.

DEIV. OP MASSACHUSETTS.
' AT BOSTON -LIBRARY

To
My Dear Mother

from whom I derived my first

conception of all that is

most beautiful in

woman

PREFACE

DURING the century now drawing to its close
there have appeared in America from time to
time women of so pre-eminent a beauty, so
dazzling a wit, so powerful a magnetism, that their
names belong no less to the history of their country
than those of the men whose genius has raised it to the
rank it holds to-day among the nations of the earth.
Among them have been women of the highest type of
mental and moral development, women of great political
and of great social genius, all of whom have left the
impress of their remarkable personalities upon thek
time. When they have manifested these qualities in
their girlhood they have risen frequently to an emi-
nence such as it is scarcely possible for the women of
any other country to attain at a correspondingly early
age.

From among the latter class the subjects of these
sketches have been taken, those having been selected
who seemed most adequately to represent their period
and locality and whose fame was beyond question, it
having been frequently of national and sometimes of
international extent.

Rising to wield the magic of their influence in every

PREFACE

decade of the century and in every section of the
country, some study of the time in which each lived
has been necessary in order to give her her proper set-
ting and to justly estimate the pov^er she exercised.

The inventions and discoveries America has given to
the world in this great century have made vast changes
in our material condition, which, in turn, have been
productive of striking contrasts between the existence
of the women who gave life and color to the early \
years of the century and that of those who reflect the
myriad advantages of its closing days.

It argues the possession of extraordinary attributes to
have been a belle of wide repute in the days when there
was no telegraph to flash the record of a woman's
beauty, charm, or social progress from one end of the
country to the other, when the press contained only
the briefest accounts of purely local and wholly public
events, when every letter that might or might not have
contained her name or have been a herald of her loveli-
ness cost its sender twenty-five cents a sheet in postage,
when her few and simple toilets were painstakingly
made by hand, when she went to balls on horseback,
arriving sometimes with a wrinkled gown but seldom
with a ruffled temper, when all travelling was done by
means of a stage-coach, and a journey from one city to
another was sometimes the event of a hfetime, and
when the comparatively few women who crossed the
seas did so in merchant vessels not infrequently owned
by their own fathers, and spent many long weeks in
the passage.

PREFACE

Those who come within the radius of its charm, how-
ever, easily recognize the power of a queenly personality,
as the lives of the most illustrious men in every period
of our history have borne testimony. Among the
women who unite the centuries there is a brilliant
promise, moreover, that there will be those in the twen-
tieth, as there have been throughout the nineteenth, " to
perpetuate that empire which beauty first established.'*

The writer gratefully acknowledges her indebtedness
to all those whose courtesy or assistance has in any way
lightened the task of collecting the data for these
sketches ; to those who by kindly lending portraits in
their possession, as well as to those who by graciously
permitting the use of their own portraits, have thereby
added so much to the value and interest of this volume.

Paris, June 22, 1900.

CONTENTS

PAGE

Marcia Burns (Mrs. John Peter Van Ness) ii

Theodosia Burr (Mrs. Joseph Alston) i8

Elizabeth Patterson (Madame Jerome Bonaparte) 39

The Caton Sisters 61

Margaret O'Neill (Mrs. John H. Eaton) 69

Cora Livingston (Mrs. Thomas Pennant Barton) 80

Emily Marshall (Mrs. William Foster Otis) 90

OcTAViA Walton (Madame Le Vert) 102

Fanny Taylor (Mrs. Thomas Harding Ellis) 118

Jessie Benton (Mrs. John C. Fremont) 123

Sallie Ward (Mrs. George F. Downs) 148

Harriet Lane (Mrs. Henry Elliott Johnston) 161

Adele Cutts (Mrs. Robert Williams) 175

Emilie Schaumburg (Mrs. Hughes-Hallett) 190

Kate Chase (Mrs. William Sprague) 206

Mattie Ould (Mrs. Oliver Schoolcraft) 230

Jennie Jerome (Lady Randolph Churchill) 239

Nellie Hazeltine (Mrs. Frederick W. Paramore) 257

Mary Victoria Leiter ( Baroness Curzon of Kedleston) . . . 264

New York as a Social Centre 288

zi

LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS

PACK

EMILY MARSHALL (Mrs. William Foster Otis). From por-
trait painted by Chester Harding in 1830 ; owned by her
daughter, Mrs. Samuel Eliot, of Boston, by whose permission
it is here reproduced for the first time in colors . Ff'otiHspiece

MARCIA BURNS (Mrs. John Peter Van Ness). From minia-
ture by James Peale, painted in 1797 ; owned by the Corcoran
Art Gallery, Washington, D. C 12

THEODOSIA BURR (Mrs. Joseph Alston). From the original
engraving by Charles B. J. F. Saint Memin ; owned by
Hampton L. Carson, Esq., of Philadelphia, by whose per-
mission it is here reproduced 22

ELIZABETH PATTERSON (Madame Jerome Bonaparte).
From portrait painted by Quingon ; owned by her grandson,
Mr. Charles Bonaparte, of Baltimore, by whose permission it
is here reproduced for the first time 42

MARY CATON (Lady Wellesley). From portrait owned by
Mrs. Charles Carroll Mactavish, of Baltimore, daughter of
General Winfield Scott. Painted by Sir Thomas Lawrence,
and reproduced by permission of Miss Emily Mactavish, now
Sister Mary Agnes of the Visitation, at Mount de Sales,
Catonsville, Maryland 64

CORA LIVINGSTON (Mrs. Thomas Pennant Barton). From
a miniature painted by herself. Reproduced for the first
time by permission of her niece. Miss Julia Barton Hunt, of
Montgomery Place, Barrytown-on-the-Hudson ....... 84

OCTAVIA WALTON (Madame Le.Vert). From portrait, re-
produced by permission of her kinswoman, Miss Josephine
Walton. Present owner, Mr. George Walton Reab, of Au-
gusta, Georgia, grandson of Madame Le Vert 104

LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS

PAGE

FANNY TAYLOR (Mrs. Thomas Harding Ellis). From por-
trait painted by Thomas Sully, Reproduced for the first time
by permission of her husband, Colonel Thomas Harding
Ellis. Present owner, her adopted son, Mr. Beverly Randolph
Harrison, of Amherst, Virginia ii8

SALLY CHEVALIER (Mrs. Abram Warwick). Painted by
Thomas Sully. Reproduced for the first time by permission
of Colonel Thomas Harding Ellis 122

SALLIE WARD (Mrs. George F. Downs). From a miniature
painted at the age of eighteen, owned by her husband, Mr.
George F. Downs, of Louisville, Kentucky, by whose per-
mission it is here reproduced for the first time 150

HARRIET LANE (Mrs. Henry Elliott Johnston). From photo-
graph by Julius Ulke 164

ADELE CUTTS (Mrs. Robert Williams). From portrait by
George Peter A. Healy, in possession of her husband. General
Robert Williams, United States Army. Reproduced by per-
mission of her daughter, Miss Ad^le Cutts Williams, of
Washington, D. C 178

EMILIE SCHAUMBURG (Mrs. Hughes-Hallett). From por-
trait by Waugh, in possession of Mrs. Hughes-Hallett, of
Dinar, France, by whose permission it is here reproduced for
the first time I94

KATE CHASE (Mrs. William Sprague). From photograph

by Julius Ulke 212

MATTIE OULD (Mrs. Oliver Schoolcraft). From photograph
by George S. Cook. Reproduced by permission of her
cousin, Mrs. Virginia Brownell, of Washington, D. C. ... 232

LIZZIE CABELL (Mrs. Albert Ritchie). From photograph.

Reproduced by permission of her sister, Mrs. John D. Lottier 234

MARY TRIPLETT (Mrs. Philip Haxall). From photograph
by Roseti. Reproduced by permission of her sister, Mrs.

Meredith Montague 236

xiv

LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS

PAGE

JENNIE JEROME (Lady Randolph Churchill). From photo-
graph by Van der Weyde. Published by permission of
Lady Churchill 244

NELLIE HAZELTINE (Mrs. Frederick W. Paramore). From
photograph by J. C. Strauss ; by permission of her brother,
Mr. W. B. Hazeltine, Jr 258

JENNIE CHAMBERLAIN (Lady Naylor-Leyland). From

the painting by H. Schmiechen 266

MATTIE MITCHELL (Duchesse de Rochefoucauld). Daugh-
ter of ex-Senator Mitchell, of Oregon. From photograph by
C. M. Bell 072

MARY VICTORIA LEITER (Baroness Curzon of Kedleston).
From photograph by Miss Alice Hughes, of London. By
permission of Lady Curzon 276

MISS MAY HANDY, of Richmond, Virginia. From photo-
graph by James L. Breese 284

CATHERINE DUER (Mrs. Clarence Mackay), of New York.

From portrait 288

sv

MARCIA BURNS

(mRS. JOHN PETER VAN NESs)

MARCIA BURNS ! What memories the quaint
Scotch lassie's name calls up !

The city of Washington disappears and its
site spreads before us in flourishing farm lands and
orchards. Scattered farm-houses raise their chimneys
amid primeval oaks and elms, and from the low door-
way of the humblest emerges the winsome form of
Marcia Burns. Six hundred acres, representing the
thrift of generations of Scotch ancestors, surround her.
The Potomac, one of the great water-ways of the
South, carrying the produce of the fertile lands above
into Alexandria for consumption or reshipment, almost
kisses her feet. This is her patrimony, over which
she has already heard such spirited debate between
her father and General Washington, then Presi-
dent of the United States, and the three gentlemen
commissioned by Congress, at that time sitting in
Philadelphia, to select and purchase the ground on
which is to be built the capital city. As she looks
riverward a canoe is beached in the shadow of the vine-
hung trees, and the President, accompanied by two of
the commissioners, whose forms have of late grown

IX

FAMOUS AMERICAN BELLES

familiar to her childish eyes, have come again to confer
with her father, whom Washington has already dubbed
" the obstinate Mr. Burns."

"And I suppose you think," says Burns, as the
dispute again waxes warm, " that people here are going
to take every grist that comes from you as pure grain.
But what would you have been if you had not married
the widow Custis?" Gracefully or ungracefully, how-
ever, he must eventually yield, for the " Widow's
Mite," as Burns's acres were described in the land
patent of 1681 which bestowed them upon his emi-
grant ancestor, form part of the tract which Maryland
has ceded to the nation for its capital. Here is stalwart
Johnson, governor of the State, to emphasize the fact
with many a round oath that makes the gentle Marcia's
heart stand still.

" And yonder lassie," says Daniel Carroll, " will be
the greatest heiress hereabouts." Davy Burns' eyes
wander towards his daughter. He is long silent. The
shadows have lengthened into darkness when he says,
" Very well, sirs, take the land, and I leave it to your
fairness to fix the terms."

Supper is served, and the guests are accommodated

for the night beneath the moss-grown roof of the

attic, for Burns' cottage boasts but four rooms, — two

sleeping-rooms, a sitting-room, and a dining-room, the

kitchen being built apart from the house, as was the

custom of the time and country. Unpretentious as the

little abode is, the deed conveying the property to the

commissioners, in trust for the government, provides

12

Marcia Burns

(Mrs. John Peter Van Ness)

From miniature by James Peale, 1797

MARCIA BURNS

that the streets of the new city shall be so laid out as
not to interfere with it.

Marcia Burns was but yet a child when fate wrought
the change in her destiny which no wisdom could have
foreseen. By the death of her only brother she became
sole heiress to what was at that time an immense for-
tune. Yet it is not through the magnitude of her
wealth that she illumines the period in which the
lines of her life were cast. It is through the exquisite
qualities of a most exalted womanhood.

With wise forethought and some premonition of
the change about to take place in her life, her parents
placed her in the family of Luther Martin, in Balti-
more. Martin was at that time at the height of his
fame as an advocate at the Maryland bar. In the
enlightened atmosphere of his home, Marcia grew up
in close companionship with his daughters, her refined
nature imperceptibly acquiring that ease and grace
which were ever afterwards characteristic of her, and
her receptive mind readily cultivating those attributes
that were to render her most attractive in conversation
to such men as Hamilton, Burr, Marshall, Randolph,
and Webster.

That face of nature famihar to her from her infancy
was in a state of unlovely transition when she again
returned to her home. Verdant orchards and sloping
meadow lands had been divided^ into building lots and
crossed and recrossed by muddy thoroughfares. In
what had been a piece of woods within a stone's throw

13

FAMOUS AMERICAN BELLES

of her father's home, the President's house was nearing
completion. A mile and a half to the east, on the
summit of a hill, the white walls of the Capitol were
becoming visible to all the surrounding country. At
irregular intervals houses, single and in rows, were in
course of construction. There was nothing in the so-
called city of Washington to which Marcia Burns
came home, and of which the government took formal
possession in 1800, that ever so remotely suggested the
garden spot that it is to-day. Members of Congress
and foreign ministers alike reviled it, and the lamenta-
tions of Mrs. Adams are too well known to be repeated
here.

Of such social life as there was scattered over so
vast an area of mud, in which " pedestrians frequently
slumped and horses became stalled," Marcia Burns
became a central figure. Though she was too gentle
and modest ever to assume a leadership, yet all that
was best and brightest in the life about her naturally
gravitated in her direction.

Notwithstanding the pretentious homes that were
going up around her, she still dwelt contentedly in
her cottage of four rooms. There, in the summer
evenings, gathered on the low, broad stone slab of
its south door, overhung with blooming wistaria, her
friends and neighbors, — the Tayloes from the after-
wards famous Octagon house, the Calverts, and the
Daniel Carrolls from Duddington Manor over near the
Capitol.

In the winter season, when Congress was in session,

14

MARCIA BURNS

the cheery sitting-room and the hospitable dining-room
were seldom without their guests. There came Aaron
Burr, to flatter her as he flattered every attractive
woman with whom he came in contact, and gallant
Hamilton, the lover of all lovely women, and Ran-
dolph of Roanoke, seeking balm for his tempestuous
spirit in that sweet and gracious presence, and Jefferson,
to admire, with all the ardor of his democratic soul,
the simplicity of her life. There, too, Tom Moore
was entertained during his visit to Washington, whence
he returned home to write things that did not make
pleasant reading matter about the city and Mr. Jeffer-
son, who was our President at the time and who
had looked rather patronizingly upon the foppish little
Irish bard. There also came suitors for the hand of
Marcia, men with a nobility of soul that enabled them
properly to estimate the beauty of her character, as well
as men who were attracted simply by the stories of her
great wealth.

In 1802, when she was twenty years old, she became
the wife of John Peter Van Ness, a member of Con-
gress from New York. He had been graduated from
Columbia College and admitted to the bar of his
native State. In 1800, when he was thirty years old,
he was elected to Congress. His youth, his graceful,
winning manners, his handsome countenance, and his
wealth won him an easy popularity in the society of
the capital.

Shortly after the death of Marcia's father. Van Ness
erected, close by the old cottage, one of the hand-
's

FAMOUS AMERICAN BELLES

somest houses of that day in the city and one that
compares not unfavorably with the most elegant homes
built there in recent years. It was designed and built
by Latrobe at a cost of nearly sixty thousand dollars,
its marble mantel-pieces, which are works of art, being
imported from Italy. It had, moreover, a porte cochere^
which was a rarity in those days, — the President's
house having the only other one in Washington. A
truly magnificent home it was, and destined to be the
scene of many brilliant occasions, as also to witness
days as full of heart-rending unhappiness to Marcia
Burns as those both in the cottage of her girlhood
and the home of her early married life had been of
pure joyousness.

With all its treasures of art, the chief ornament of
the new home was Ann Van Ness, who completed
her studies at a boarding-school in Philadelphia and
returned to Washington about the time her parents
took possession of it. Two years later she married
Arthur Middleton, of South Carolina, the son of a
signer of the Declaration of Independence, and prob-
ably that same Arthur Middleton, of whom Mrs.
Edward Livingston made mention in a letter to her
husband ten years later to the effect that his mous-
taches, whiskers, and velvet shirt were creating more
of a sensation in New York than the quarrel between
Jackson and Calhoun. Ann died within a year after
her marriage. She was an only child, and to her
mother life held nothing that could amend her loss.
Thenceforth she withdrew from the sphere to which she

l6

MARCIA BURNS

had been since her early girlhood so great an ornament.
She frequently sought the seclusion of the little cottage,
and there, perhaps, lived over in memory the days that
had known no shadow.

She did not need the discipline of sorrow, which
some natures require to sweeten them, but under its
influence she rose to the loftiest heights of benevolence.
Her pictured face reveals to us the beauty of her soul.
The truth that speaks in her eyes, the spirituality of
her brow, the tenderness of her mouth, combine to
make the perfection of human character. The Wash-
ington City Orphan Asylum, which she founded and
to which she devoted both time and means, is a fitting
monument to her memory.

She died on the (jth of September, 1832, and is the
only woman who was ever honored with a public
funeral in Washington. Through her charities she had
become as widely known and as tenderly loved in the
later years of her life as she had been in her youth
through qualities not less endearing.

The following tribute to her is by Horatio Greenough :

"'Mid rank and wealth and worldly pride.
From every snare she turned aside.
She sought the low, the humble shed.
Where gaunt disease and famine tread ;
And from that time, in youthful pride.
She stood Van Ness's blooming bride.
No day her blameless head o'er past
* But saw her dearer than the last.'*

17

THEODOSIA BURR

(mrs. JOSEPH Alston)

THEODOSIA BURR was, as has been said of
the daughter of another eminent statesman
with whom Aaron Burr was closely identified,
" the soul of her father's soul." If we would know
the better part of a man who was one of the most
remarkable characters of his age, we must know Theo-
dosia, through whom, perhaps, his name, which all the
subtlety of his soul was bent on immortalizing, may
live to a better fame in the centuries to come than has
attended it through the years of that in which he lived.
Under the inspiration of her presence both her father
and husband rose to lofty pinnacles in the political
arena of their country. Her father on the eve of her
marriage stood at the very portals of the Chief Magis-
tracy. In less than ten years of political life he had so
progressed that the election of 1800 resulted in a tie
vote for the Presidency between Aaron Burr and
Thomas Jefferson.

In 1801, while the festivities attending Theodosia's
marriage at Albany were at their height, the House of
Representatives at Washington entered upon that long
session of seven days which terminated in declaring

18

THEODOSIA BURR

Thomas Jefferson President of the United States and
Aaron Burr Vice-President.

From the moment Theodosia Hnked her hfe with
another's, and thus in a measure ceased to be part of
his, the retrogressive period of Aaron Burr's h'fe began.

To her husband she carried that same inspiring in-
fluence which she had wielded over her father. She
gave an impetus to his luxuriant and aimless existence,
and at the time of the tragedy which ended her twenty-
nine years of life he was occupying the gubernatorial
chair of his State. Her life was closely allied not
only with the private interests, but with the political
ambitions of both. Her father rarely dined, either
among friends or strangers, that her health was not
drunk. He made her known to everybody, and during
his travels in Europe so interested Jeremy Bentham
and other writers in her that they sent her sets of their
books.

At a time when woman was regarded rather as the
companion of a man's heart than as his intellectual
mate, " the soft green of the soul on which we rest our
eyes that are fatigued with beholding more glaring
objects," Theodosia Burr's mental faculties were so
developed and trained as to fit her for the most com-
plete and sympathetic union with father, husband, and
son.

It is but a negative tribute to say that she was by
far the best-educated woman of her time and country.
In the beauty of her mind and person she realized her
father's ideal of a perfect woman, and amply satisfied

19

FAMOUS AMERICAN BELLES

his pride and vanity. On the eve of his duel with
Hamilton he wrote to her, " I am indebted to you, my
dearest Theodosia, for a very great portion of the happi-
ness which I have enjoyed in this hfe. You have com-
pletely satisfied all that my heart and affections had
hoped for or ever wished."

Theodosia was the only child of Burr's marriage
with the widow of a British army officer who had lost
his life in the West Indies.

Fresh from the battle-fields of the Revolution, where
he had won honors of which he was ever more te-
nacious than of those achieved elsewhere, and but
recently admitted to the bar after a brief period of
study, his marriage to a woman ten years his senior
and the mother of two well-grown boys was a source
of genuine wonderment to Burr's friends in New York.
Young, of fascinating manner and appearance, some
means, and good family, he might readily have aspired
to an alliance with any one of those families which
■w fre a power in the State, — the Livingstons, the Van
Rci.sselaers, or the Clintons. But before he quitted the
army, Burr had discovered the charms of the society at
the " Hermitage," presided over by Mrs. De Visme and
her two daughters, one of whom was the widow of
Colonel Prevost.

There he met the most distinguished men of his

country, through whose influence this family had been

spared the inconvenience of moving within the British

lines at the outbreak of hostilities. In the library,

there, he discovered a treasure-house of French litera-

20

THEODOSIA BURR

ture, to which he was ever partial, and in the inter-
change of thought which followed his reading, Aaron
Burr and Mrs. Prevost became constantly more im-
bued with a sense of the beauty and attraction of each
other's minds. Through her he gleaned his first rever-
ence for the intellectual power of woman, and to her
he owed the happiest days of his life.

" The mother of my Theo," he said, speaking of her
towards the close of his life, " was the best woman and
the finest lady I have ever known." In her finished
manner, her fine bearing, and her exquisite mind there
was a delicate harmony that soothed and satisfied Burr's
artistic soul. His marriage to her in July, 1782, put
an end to the rumor that he was paying his addresses
to Miss De Visme, to which his frequent visits to the
" Hermitage" had given rise.

The first year of their married life was spent in
Albany, where he was engaged in the practice of law,
and where Theodosia was bom on the 23d of June,
1783. In the fall of that year her parents removed to
the city of New York, where they had leased a house
in Maiden Lane, at a rental of two hundred pounds
per year, to commence from the time the British troops
left New York, which they did on November 23,

1783-

So prosperous were Burr's financial affairs that he

early in his married life acquired also the possession of

a country seat, Richmond Hill; then two miles from

the city. The house, a stately frame building with a

lofty portico supported by Ionic columns, stood on a

21

FAMOUS AMERICAN BELLES

noble hill, several hundred feet in height, overlooking
the river and the Jersey shore. It was surrounded by
a lawn shaded by oaks, lindens, and cedars, on the out-
skirts of which on all sides stretched woods of more
than a hundred acres. Within the enclosure was a
pond known for many years after the property had
passed from Burr's possession as Burr's Pond. On it
Theodosia learned the graceful art of skating when still
quite a little girl.

The house, built about the middle of the last century,
was Washington's head-quarters in 1776, and Burr, who
was there with him, conceived his first desire to become
its possessor. It was occupied by John Adams during
his tenure of the Vice-Presidency, when New York
was the capital, and Burr's long possession of it culmi-
nated in the elegant hospitality of which it was the
scene during his term as Vice-President. He returned
there from Washington at the close of the sessions of
Congress, and entertained with a lavishness that event-
ually bankrupted him.

His library, which bespoke the critical taste of the
scholar, and which he had begun to collect as a boy,
was a feature of the house, recalled in after years by
men who had been his guests as vividly as the brilliant
dinner parties given beneath the same roof by the dis-
tinguished Adams and his wife. He had his London
bookseller, through whom he made constant additions
to his collection, for Burr was ever a lover of books,
and he recorded in his journal in his days of exile and
want with what pangs he had been obliged to part with

22

Theodosia Burr

(Mrs. Joseph Alston)

By Charles B. J. F. Saint Memin

THEODOSIA BURR

some odd volumes he had with him upon discovering
that he was again under the necessity of dining.

His passion for books he imparted to his daughter,
urging upon her at all times the necessity for study and
improvement, and never relinquishing his endeavors to
carry her mind to a high order of cultivation. In the
communication he addressed to his son-in-law on the
night before his duel with Hamilton, he asked as a last
favor that he would urge Theodosia to continue to
study. In all his letters to her his efforts to stimulate
this habit were uppermost. " The longer I live," she
wrote to him after her marriage, " the more frequently
the truth of your advice evinces itself, that occupation
is necessary to give us command over ourselves."

In the development of her mind and character he
pursued a clearly-defined and well-directed course.
When she was ten years old he wrote to his wife from
Philadelphia, where he was at the time occupying a
seat in the Senate, reminding her that he had left a
memorandum of what Theodosia was to learn during
his absence. While his pubhc duties were such that
he was not able always to personally superintend her
studies, he gave minute instructions to the tutors to
whom he intrusted her, and constituted himself their
vigilant and inexorable critic. " If your young teacher,"
he wrote to her when she was in her sixteenth year,
" after a week's trial should not suit you, dismiss him
on any pretence, without wounding his pride, and take
the old Scotchman. Resolve to succeed, and you can-
not fail."

23

FAMOUS AMERICAN BELLES

Mary Wollstonecraft's book, " A Vindication of the
Rights of Women," in which Burr became so absorbed
that he sat up all night reading it, so affected him that
its influence told on all Theodosia's life. On the princi-
ples it inculcated were based both her mental and moral
development. " If I could foresee," he wrote to his
wife, " that Theodosia would become a mere fashion-
able woman with all the attendant frivolity and vacuity
of mind, adorned with whatever grace and allurement,
I would earnestly pray God to take her forthwith
hence. But I yet hope by her to convince the world
what neither sex appears to believe, — that women have
souls."

" And do you regret," he wrote to Theodosia her-
self, when she was a little more than sixteen, " you are
not also a woman ^ That you are not numbered in
that galaxy of beauty which adorns an assembly-room?
Coquetting for admiration and attracting flattery ? No.
I answer with confidence. You feel that you are ma-
turing for solid friendship. The friends you gain you
will never lose ; and no one, I think, will dare to insult
your understanding by such compliments as are most
graciously received by too many of your sex."

Burr was himself an ornament to many a drawing-
room, and no man ever had better opportunities for
estimating the deficiencies in the system of educating
the women of his day. Theodosia he brought up like
a young Spartan, with few or none of the feminine
affectations then in vogue. Courage and fortitude

were his darling virtues, and so instilled into her from

24

THEODOSIA BURR

her infancy that they formed almost the groundwork of
her character. " No apologies or explanations. I hate
them," he said, reproving her for some fault of omis-
sion when she was a little child. " I beg and expect it
of you," he wrote to her from Richmond, where he
was awaiting trial for treason, and whither she was
hastening to him, " that you will conduct yourself as
becomes my daughter, and that you manifest no signs
of weakness or alarm."

Theodosia's affection for her father was the absorb-
ing passion of her life. " You appear to me so supe-
rior, so elevated above other men," she once wrote to
him, " I contemplate you with such a strange mixture
of humility, admiration, reverence, love, and pride, that
very little superstition would be necessary to make me
worship you as a superior being ; such enthusiasm does
your character excite in me. When I afterwards revert
to myself, how insignificant do my best qualities ap-
pear. My vanity would be greater if I had not been
placed so near you ; and yet my pride is our relation-
ship. I had rather not live than not be the daughter
of such a man."

He sent his love to " the smiling little girl," in a
letter he wrote his wife when Theodosia was two years
old, not knowing that with his going she had not only
ceased to smile, but that she wept bitterly and heart-
brokenly whenever his name was mentioned, and that
it required the combined efforts of her miother and
nurse to divert her thoughts from the painful fact of
his absence. As her mother said, the attachment which

25

FAMOUS AMERICAN BELLES

thus early manifested itself in so marked a manner^
was not of a common nature. Theodosia's life is an
evidence of how exalted it was, when, with all the
world against him, she was yet proud to be his
daughter.

Burr exercised an almost hypnotic influence over
both men and women, and there are extant innumerable
anecdotes of the conquests he continually made over
those who had gone forth to apprehend him as a vil-
lain. In his intercourse with Theodosia he brought
into play all those delicate attributes of his mind which
captivated so many women. She was constantly in his
thoughts. " The ideas of which you are the object,
that daily pass through my mind," he wrote to her in
1 799, from Albany, where the Legislature was in ses-
sion, " would, if committed to writing, fill an octavo
volume. . . . Indeed, my dear Theodosia, I have many,
many moments of solicitude about you."

He exacted much of her even as a child, among
other things that she should keep a journal in his absence,
to be sent to him at regular intervals, and that she
should answer his letters minutely and promptly.
Writing to her when she was eleven years old, he
said, —

" Yesterday I received your letter and joumal to the

13th inclusive. On the 13th you say you got nine

pages in Lucian. It was, to be sure, a most surprising

lesson. I suspect it must have been the second time

going over, and even then it would have been great,

and, at the same rate, you will be through a second

26

THEODOSIA BURR

time before my month is up. I should be delighted to
find it so. I have not told you directly that I should
stay longer than a month but I was angry enough with
you to stay three months when you neglected to write
to me for two successive posts."

" I beg, Miss Prissy," he wrote to her from Phila-
delphia during the same year, " that you will name a
single ''unsuccessful effort' which you have made to
please me. As to the letters and journal which you
did write, surely you have reason abundant to believe
that they gave me pleasure ; and how the deuce I am
to be pleased with those you did not write, and how an
omission to write can be called an effort, remains for
your ingenuity to disclose."

In his next letter to her, he referred again to " the
unsuccessful effort."

" Your letter of the 9th, my dear Theo, was a most
agreeable surprise to me. I had not dared even to
hope for one until to-morrow. In one instance, at
least, an attempt to please me has not been ' unsuc-
cessful'' You see, I do not forget that piece of impu-
dence."

He was mindful, too, of her health, and in one of
his letters begged her to carry herself erect. He had
himself a remarkably erect and graceful carriage, which
lent a majesty to his bearing and gave the impression
of much greater height than he possessed.

While his letters to her were full of advice and sug-
gestions for her improvement, they were by no means
lacking in commendation. As she grew to woman-

27

FAMOUS AMERICAN BELLES

hood this was more marked, as was also his tendency
to confide in her. Her father's frequent and prolonged
absences from home, her mother's long illness, attended
with much suffering and terminating in death when
Theodosia was but eleven years old, had necessitated
an early assumption of those responsibilities which
mature and strengthen character. To a suggestion
contained in a letter written by her father shortly be-
fore her mother's death, that he would leave Congress
that he might have more time to devote to his wife,
Theodosia replied with a quaintness that was character-
istic of her : " Ma begs that you omit the thought of
leaving Congress."

From her close association with her mother under
such circumstances her receptive mind became imbued
with the beauties of the Christian philosophy, which
her father, though a grandson of Jonathan Edwards
and a son of. the Rev. Aaron Burr, founder and first
president of Princeton College, had not included in the
course of studies so exactingly marked out for her.
She was at this time studying Latin, Greek, French,
and music, and learning to dance and to skate.

After her mother's death. Burr, who had a profound
admiration for the language, literature, and people of
France, consigned her to a French governess. She
acquired a complete mastery of that tongue, and the
fluency with which she spoke it added much to the
grace with which she presided over her father's home,
for Burr frequently entertained Frenchmen. Louis
Philippe, Jerome Bonaparte, Talleyrand, and Volney

28

THEODOSIA BURR

were all at various times his guests at Richmond
Hill.

When Theodosia was fourteen she took her place
at the head of her father's household and became his
inseparable companion, her playful wit illuminating his
hours of relaxation, her steadfast courage, her strength,
her very presence, constituting his most powerful
defence in the darkest hours of his life.

She had much of her mother's self-poise and ele-
gance of manner, together with her father's dignity and
wit. When she reached maturity, though short in
stature like her father's family, she carried herself with
a noble dignity which, with a certain lofty benevolence
of countenance, the refinement of her features, the
frank intelligence of her brow, the healthful bloom of
her complexion, made her singularly beautiful. So
absolute was her father's confidence in her that he
wrote when she was but seventeen, " Many are sur-
prised that I could repose in you so great a trust as
that of yourself, but I knew you were equal to it, and
I am not deceived."

He sent Brant, the Indian chief, to her from Phila-
delphia with a letter of introduction, — she was but four-
teen at the time and mistress of Richmond Hill, where
she entertained him with an ease which gave her father
much gratification. She gave a dinner in his honor,
inviting to meet him some of her father's friends,
among them Volney, Bishop Moore, Dr. Bard, and Dr.
Hosack. She was already a belle, with many admirers
ever in her wake, when Edward Livingston, then mayor

29

FAMOUS AMERICAN BELLES

of New York, taking her aboard a French frigate
lying in the harbor of the city, thus warned her : " You
must bring none of your sparks on board, Theodosia.
We have a magazine here, and we shall all be blown
up."

Her life was full of happiness at this time, with
Hamilton's wife and daughters among her friends,
her father one of the Presidential possibilities, and
she enjoying much of his society, accompanying him
frequently to Albany on horseback and visiting in the
neighborhood while he transacted his business at the
capital.

In February, 1801, a few months before she was
eighteen, Theodosia was married to Joseph Alston, of
South Carolina. He also was young, being but twenty-
two, and wealthy, possessing extensive rice plantations,
talented and ambitious, though as yet without a specific
object on which to expend these qualities. He had
studied law and been admitted to the bar, though he
had not begun to practise. Upon Burr's suggestion he
entered upon a political career, rising eventually to the
governorship of his State.

Theodosia argued for a deferment of the marriage,
quoting Aristotle, that a man should not marry till he
was thirty-six. With convincing eloquence and ardor,
Alston replied, winning his suit, notwithstanding Aris-
totle and other equally eminent authorities.

On February 7, 1801, the New York Commercial
Advertiser announced the marriage, which had taken
place on the 2d, at Albany, where the Legislature,

30

THEODOSIA BURR

of which Burr was then a member, was in session. It
was a period of intense excitement throughout the
country, and the names of Jefferson and Burr were in
all mouths. The people of the country had cast a tie
vote, which threw the election into the House of Rep-
resentatives. Party spirit manifested itself for the first
time in the young republic, and the strength of the
constitution was early put to a severe test.

Theodosia, on her way to her new home in the
South, stopped in Washington, where, on the 4th of
March, she saw her father inducted into the Vice-
Presidency.

Her marriage and her father's new honors inaugurated
for her three years of absolute happiness. Though her
husband's home and her father's were a journey of
twenty days apart, she went frequently back and forth,
and though she wrote to her husband during one of
her early visits to her old home, " Where you are,
there is my country, and in you are centred all my
wishes," she was undoubtedly in better health and
spirits when in her northern home. Her winters were
passed in Charleston, where she was well received and
much beloved, and where she became an important
factor in her husband's political success.

Her father missed her sadly. " For what else, for
whom else, do I live V he had written to her shortly
before her marriage. When she was no longer at
Richmond Hill he returned there with painful reluc-
tance. Theodosia urged him to marry again, and from
the tone of a letter he wrote to her about this time

31

FAMOUS AMERICAN BELLES

there seems to have been some probabihty of his
accepting her suggestion. If he were really in earnest,
however, he at least did not conduct the affair with his
usual sapiency, and though Theodosia from afar threw
light on the young woman's vagaries, it was to no
purpose.

Theodosia's only child, a son, she named after her
father, to whom he was a source of much pride and
affection. To Burr the anniversaries of the day of
Theodosia's birth were ever occasions for rejoicing.
Her twenty-first birthday, though she was not with him,
he celebrated with a dinner-party at Richmond Hill.
He had her portrait placed in a chair at the table, but,
as it was a profile and appeared unsociable, he had it
hung up again. " We laughed an hour, danced an
hour, and drank your health," he wrote to her.

But already the days of her contentment were
drawing to a close. Before this letter telling her of
the happiness the day had given him had reached her,
the tradegy of Weehawken had been enacted. Its
shadow fell forever upon him who survived it, and who
doubtless became a potent instrument in Hamilton's
canonization. With awful blackness, too, it fell upon
the far-away daughter when she heard that her father
was a fugitive with an indictment for murder hanging
over him.

From that moment shadows gathered about her with
ever-increasing sombreness till they culminated in that
hour of darkness in which her life went out.

In Burr's Mexican scheme, which he set on foot

32

THEODOSIA BURR

shortly after the expiration of his term as Vice-Presi-
dent, Theodosia became involved sentimentally, and
her husband financially. The President's proclamation
and Burr's arrest put an end to their visionary dynasty
in Mexico. Instead of beholding him upon a throne,
they saw him arraigned before the tribunal of justice at
Richmond, on a charge of high treason, with Chief
Justice Marshall the presiding judge, and John Ran-
dolph of Roanoke foreman of the jury. Never, it
has been said, did two more wonderful pairs of eyes
than those of Marshall and Burr, black, brilliant, and
penetrating, look into each other.

In arraigning Burr, there was an element to be reck-
oned with that is not ordinarily taken into considera-
tion,— the marvellous personality of the man. From
his appearance, his manners, his voice, his eyes, ema-
nated an influence not to be lightly estimated. In his
bearing and presence he was peerless. He spoke with-
out effort, in a full, crisp, rather than powerful, voice,
clothing his thoughts in the language best suited to
their most accurate expression, terse, epigrammatic and
devoid of figures, his mobile features lending them-
selves to the thought that was severe or scintillating,
tender or impressive. With a woman's tact he com-
bined an adroit intellect equal to any emergency.

He conducted his own defence, supported by the
best legal talent in the country. His son-in-law sat
beside him every day in court, and Theodosia, the
beautiful, noble Theodosia, with sublime faith in her
father, inspired a confidence in him in other breasts.
3 33

FAMOUS AMERICAN BELLES

She appealed to the poetic fancy of Washington
Irving, then a young barrister, who was sent from New
York to report the trial for his brother's paper, and
whose letters evince an unmistakable sympathy for
Burr. Luther Martin, one of the foremost geniuses
of the Maryland bar, defended him with an eloquence
that rendered Martin himself an object of suspicion to
Thomas Jefferson.

" I find that Luther Martin's idolatrous admiration of
Mrs. Alston," wrote Blennerhassett, " is almost as exces-
sive as my own, but far more beneficial to his interests
and injurious to his judgment, as it is the medium of his
blind attachment to her father, whose secrets and views,
past, present, and to come, he is and wishes to remain
ignorant of Nor can he see a speck in the character
of Alston, for the best of all reasons with him, — namely,
that Alston has such a wife."

Though Burr was acquitted, there was an element of
hostility to him in the government, and much distrust
of him among the people of the country at large. In
the following year, therefore, he went to Europe.
Theodosia had gone to New York to be near him.
He saw her for the last time on June 7, 1808, the
night before he sailed. She spent that summer at
Saratoga, and the following winter in New York,
where she lived in retirement.

" The world," she said, in one of her letters to her
father about this time, " begins to cool terribly around
me. You would be surprised how many I supposed
attached to me have abandoned the sorry losing game

34

THEODOSIA BURR

of disinterested friendship." She repeatedly urged him
to return, promising him that if the worst came to the
worst, she would leave everything and suffer with him.

•A few months after Madison's elevation to the Presi-
dency she wrote to Mrs. Madison, whom her father
had known when she was a young widow, and to
whom he had introduced Mr. Madison. " Ever since
the choice of the people was first declared in favor of
Mr. Madison, my heart, amid the universal joy, has
beat with the hope that I, too, should soon have reason to
rejoice," she wrote. She desired to know if there was
danger of any further prosecution of her father in the
event of his return. For the same purpose she wrote
two years later from the Oaks, her South Carolina
home, to Albert Gallatin, then Secretary of the Treas-
ury, and once a friend of her father's. The letter was
calmly logical, yet eloquent with feeling.

In another year Burr was within sight of his home
and country. As he neared her shores he wrote in his
journal, " A pilot is in sight and within two miles of
us. All is bustle and joy except Gamp [the name by
which his little grandson called him] . Why should he
rejoice ?"

Of all the misfortunes of his life, the heaviest were
to fall upon him that year. A month after her father's
arrival in New York, and while her heart was yet re-
joicing that he had been kindly received, the young
life of Theodosia's son, full of beauty and promise,
closed. " I will not conceal from you," wrote Alston
to his father-in-law, " that life is a burden, which, heavy

35

FAMOUS AMERICAN BELLES

as it is, we shall support, if not with dignity, at least
with decency and firmness. Theodosia has endured all
that a human being could endure, but her admirable
mind will triumph. She supports herself in a manner
worthy of your daughter."

Theodosia longed to see her father. We were at
war with England at the time, and her husband, gov-
ernor of his State and general of militia, could not
leave his post of duty to accompany her to New York.
Her health was so feeble that she could not safely
attempt the journey alone. Her father's old friend
Timothy Green offered his services, going from New
York to bring her north. Under his care, and accom-
panied by her maid, Theodosia sailed from Charleston
on the " Pilot" on the 30th of December, 1812. Save
by her fellow passengers on the ill-fated vessel, she was
never seen or heard of again. A violent storm swept
the coast on the following day, and it has been sup-
posed that the " Pilot," with all on board, went down
off Cape Hatteras. After weeks and months of de-
spairing silence, father and husband gave her up. Burr
during this period of torturing suspense acquired a
habit which clung to him to the end of his life, — of
wistfully scanning the horizon for ships as he walked
on the battery, then the popular resort of all New
Yorkers.

Two or three years after she had gone from their
lives, her husband sent a chest of her belongings, which
he had not had the courage to open, to her father.
" What a fate, poor thing !" sighed Burr, as he recog-

36

THEODOSIA BURR

nized the familiar articles. Among the contents was a
letter addressed, " To my husband. To be delivered
after my death and before my burial." It was dated
August 6, 1 805, and had been written during an ab-
sence of her husband from home, at a time when,
being depressed in health and spirits, she feared that
death was approaching. After leaving some remem-
brance to the various members of her husband's family,
and begging her husband to provide for Peggy, an old
servant, she says, —

" Death is not welcome. I confess it is ever dreaded.
You have made me too fond of life. Adieu then,
thou kind, thou tender husband. Adieu, friend of my
heart. May Heaven prosper you, and may we meet
hereafter. Adieu ; perhaps we may never see each
other again in this world. You are away, I wished to
hold you fast, and prevent you from going this morn-
ing. But He who is wisdom itself ordains events ; we
must submit to them. Least of all should I murmur,
I, on whom so many blessings have been showered,
whose days have been numbered by bounties, who have
had such a husband, such a child, such a father. Oh,
pardon me, my God, if I regret leaving these. I resign
myself Adieu once more, and for the last time, my
beloved. Speak of me often to our son. Let him
love the memory of his mother, and let him know how
he was loved by her.

" Your wife, your fond wife,

" Theo.

37

FAMOUS AMERICAN BELLES

" Let my father see my son sometimes. Do not be
unkind towards him whom I have loved so much, I
beseech you. Burn all my papers except my father's
letters, which I beg you to return to him. Adieu, my
sweet boy. Love your father, be grateful and affec-
tionate to him while he lives, be the pride of his
meridian, the support of his departing days. Be all
that he wishes, for he made your mother happy."

After expressing a wish that she may not he stripped
and washed according to the usual custom, being pure
enough to return to dust, she concludes : " If it does
not appear contradictory or silly, I beg to be kept as
long as possible before I am consigned to the earth."

Alston, who survived her but four years, wrote heart-
brokenly to her father: "My boy, my wife, gone
both ! This, then, is the end of all the hopes we had
formed. You may well observe that you feel severed
from the human race. She was the last tie that bound
us to the species. What have we left ? Yet, after all,
he is a poor actor who cannot sustain his hour upon
the stage, be his part what it may. But the man who
has been deemed worthy of the heart of Theodosia
Burr, and who has felt what it was to be blessed with
such a woman's love, will never forget his elevation."

38

ELIZABETH PATTERSON

(mADAME JEROME BONAPARTe)

THE city into which Baltimore Town was legis-
lated on the last day of the year 1796 already
fostered within its limits the germ of the dual
life, social and commercial, to which it has owed its
subsequent eminence. Not infrequently, in the days
of its inception, the same roof sheltered drawing-room
and warehouse, the earlier merchants deeming it neces-
sary to keep their growing interests constantly beneath
their personal vigilance. Later, the commercial life
crowded out the domestic life, and merchants built
their dwellings — stately bricks or frames, painted blue,
yellow, or white, facing on avenues of locust-trees — in
another part of the town, all bearing quaint evidence
of the far-away ports with which their vessels traded,
while the whole town was permeated with the odor
peculiar to shipping districts.

The first theatre troupe that took the town by storm
played in one of the old warehouses, whose walls re-
echoed the approbation of the pleasure-hungry audi-
ence, among whom were no fastidious critics to pick
flaws in " King Richard III.," and still less in " A Miss
in her Teens," which followed.

39

FAMOUS AMERICAN BELLES

Baltimore never had the qualms of conscience which
afflicted some of her puritanical sister towns concern-
ing the pleasures in which she might rightly indulge.
She looked out upon life, rather, with a liberality of
mental vision which partook of the breadth of the seas
her merchantmen traversed.

The brick theatre built in 1781 became one of the
most revered spots in the town, and when the actors
came her way, Baltimore turned out en masse to give
them royal welcome.

At the close of the Revolutionary War a number of
the French officers of the army and navy who had re-
mained in this country settled in Baltimore, thereby
adding a foreign flavor to the social side of its existence,
which, like that of all the cities and towns of the young
Republic, was characterized more or less by a whole-
some simplicity.

In the town, a dozen years before it blossomed into the
city, before its streets were paved, when its only commu-
nication with inland towns was by means of the stage-
coach, and three years before Maryland had ratified the
Constitution of the new union of States, there was born
to one of her merchants, William Patterson, a daughter,
the repute of whose beauty was destined to fill two con-
tinents, the spicy aroma of whose wit to penetrate the
sacred precincts of imperial throne-rooms, and the
story of whose life to touch the hearts of many gener-
ations.

The daughter of one of the self-made men whose
sterling qualities have lent such stability to the indus-

40

ELIZABETH PATTERSON

tries and development of the country, who, born of
Irish parentage and coming to this country in his four-
teenth year, had carved his own way shrewdly and
judiciously to the position of distinction he held
among his fellow-townsmen and the people of his
adopted country, Elizabeth mherited many of his
dominant characteristics. He was estimated to be the
wealthiest merchant, and, with the possible exception
of Charles Carroll, the wealthiest man, in the United
States. Her mother, Dorcas Spear, came of good
Maryland lineage, and was a woman of gentle charac-
ter and cultivated mind. She superintended for the
most part Elizabeth's education, which, if somewhat
erratic, was, nevertheless, superior to that enjoyed by
the average woman of that period. It is said that she
acquired an early familiarity with Rochefoucauld's
" Maxims" and committed to memory Young's " Night
Thoughts." Lady Morgan, whose friendship she
formed later in life, reaUzing the brilliancy of her
mind, regretted that its earlier direction had not been
more systematic.

Her father, from his o^\ti statement, seems to have
looked after the conduct of his family with the same
minute vigilance which he bestowed upon his financial
concerns.

" I always consider it a duty to my family," he said,
" to keep them as much as possible under my own eye,
so that I have seldom in my life left Baltimore either
on pleasure or business. Ever since I had a house it
has been my invariable rule to be the last up at night,

41

FAMOUS AMERICAN BELLES

and to see that the fires and light were secured before I
retired myself, by which I found little risk from fires
and managed to have my family keep regular hours.
What I possess is solely the product of my own labor.
I inherited nothing of my forefathers, nor have I bene-
fited anything from public favors or appointments."

Strangely similar is the concluding sentiment to that
expressed by the founder of another family on another
continent, — Napoleon Bonaparte. " Sole fabricator of
my destiny, I owe nothing to my brothers," said he,
whose fortunes, though he had reared them upon a
loftier pinnacle, were, nevertheless, to be crossed by
those of the Patterson family.

The eldest daughter in a family of thirteen chil-
dren, Elizabeth Patterson grew up at a period when the
beaux of society read Chesterfield, when no man be-
grudged the time expended on the profound and sweep-
ing bow then dictated by gallantry, and when fencing
and dancing formed a part of every gentleman's educa-
tion.

" She possessed the pure Grecian contour ; her head
was exquisitely formed, her forehead fair and shapely,
her eyes large and dark, with an expression of tender-
ness that did not belong to her character ; and the deli-
cate loveliness of her mouth and chin, the soft bloom
of her complexion, together with her beautifully
rounded shoulders and tapering arms, combined to form
one of the loveliest of women." She had had numer-
ous offers of marriage before she reached her eighteenth

year, her father's wealth and prominence, independent

42

Elizabeth Patterson

(Madame Jerome Bonaparte)

From portrait by Quingon

ELIZABETH PATTERSON

of her own attractive personality, having insured her
social prestige, but as yet she walked heart whole and
fancy free.

In the summer of 1803 Jerome, the youngest brother
of Napoleon Bonaparte, and then less than nineteen
years of age, detaching himself from naval duty in the
West Indies and following the bent of his own incli-
nation, eventually put into the port of New York.
Whatever breach of military discipline this implies will
in no way astound those famihar with Jerome's char-
acter.

Too young to have taken part in the struggles that
had elevated his family to such dizzy heights, he yet,
at an age most susceptible to the altered conditions of
his life, came into the full enjoyment of all the advan-
tages they offered. Napoleon was wont to take a
humorous rather than a serious view of this " mauvais
sujet^'' as he frequently called Jerome. Madame Junot
relates a characteristic anecdote in her memoirs which,
she says, she had from the Emperor himself Re-
turning to Paris after the battle of Marengo, Napoleon
was presented with various bills contracted by Jerome
during his absence. One of these, to the amount
of twenty thousand francs, was for a superb shaving
set in gold, mother of pearl, silver, ivory, and costly
enamels. It was a work of art, but of no possible
use to Jerome, who, being but fifteen years old, was
without the suggestion of a beard.

To his mother he was an idol, and to the end of her
life he was able to extract from her in generous measure

43

FAMOUS AMERICAN BELLES

much of that substance which she expended grudgingly-
even upon herself.

Enveloped in the glory of a great name, Jerome's
advent into the social current of New York was noised
abroad in the few and ordinarily but little-read news-
papers of the day.

By stage the news was brought to Baltimore. The
returning coach took an urgent invitation to Jerome
and his suite to visit that city from Commodore Barney,
who had been his recent comrade-in-arms in the West
Indies. They accepted the invitation, and early in Sep-
tember found themselves the objects of a lavish hospi-
tality.

Shortly after their arrival one of Jerome's suite. Gen-
eral Rewbell, lost his heart to Miss Henrietta Pascault,
one of the belles of the town, to whom he was, after a
brief courtship, married.

At the fall races, which were in progress when he
arrived in Baltimore, Jerome for the first time saw the
woman in whose life he was thereafter destined to play
so conspicuous a part. We may well believe that she
was radiantly beautiful in a gown of buff silk with a
lace fichu and a leghorn hat with tulle trimmings and
black plumes.

He had already heard of the beautiful Miss Patter-
son, and had declared with youthful impetuosity that
he would marry her. The fact that she was aware of
his preconceived sentiments gave a piquancy to their
first meeting, which was enhanced by the boyish en-
thusiasm with which he referred to her as his ''''belle

44

ELIZABETH PATTERSON

femmeT The coquetry with which she resisted his too
evident admiration had the invariable effect of further
ensnaring his princely affections.

They met frequently in those .centres of hospitality,
the home of Samuel Chase, who twenty-odd years
before had put his name to the Declaration of Inde-
pendence ; at " Belvedere," the home of Colonel John
Eager Howard, the hero of Cowpens ; at " Greenmount,"
" Druid Hill," and " Brooklandwood," where three other
afterwards celebrated beauties were in course of develop-
ment.

When the festivities in honor of Jerome were at
their height, Elizabeth was borne away to the seclusion
of a Virginia estate, under the wing of a vigilant
mother, who rightly interpreted the course of events
and foresaw the obstacles that loomed in the pathway
of their happy termination. There only an occasional
echo of the gayety that was rife at Baltimore reached
her, making unbearable that rural quiet, which means
happiness only to a contented mind, and is a veritable
torture to such a restless spirit as ever possessed Eliza-
beth Patterson. Her entreaties at length prevailed, and
she was brought back to the city, where, on the 29th
of October, to prove how futile the separation had
been, scarcely eight weeks after their first meeting, Je-
rome procured a license of marriage.

He was probably remonstrated with by the members
of his suite, whose age and the length of whose friend-
ship made possible that liberty. Rewbell, in the first
flush of his own happy union doubtless gave Jerome

45

FAMOUS AMERICAN BELLES

a reckless support that not even the crafty Le Camus
could counterbalance. To such opposition as Eliza-
beth's family offered, she replied that she " would rather
be the wife of Jerome for one hour than of any other
man for a lifetime."

On Christmas Eve, 1803, Jerome Bonaparte, brother
of the man who five months later declared himself
Emperor of France, and EHzabeth Patterson, daughter
of an American merchant, entered into that union
whose subsequent rending was to echo throughout
Christendom. The ceremony was performed in the
home of Elizabeth's father, according to the rites of
the Catholic Church, by the Right Reverend John
Carroll, first archbishop of America. It was witnessed
by the French Consul at Baltimore, M. Sotin, Alex-
ander le Camus, who was Jerome's secretary, and the
mayor of Baltimore.

The marriage contract, which was drawn up by
Alexander J. Dallas, afterwards Secretary of the
Treasury, bears evidence of the apprehension felt by
Elizabeth's family as to the outcome of this inter-
national union with so youthful a bridegroom.

The dress worn by Elizabeth on her bridal night
was of exquisitely fine white muslin, elaborately em-
broidered. She said of the gown in after years that it
was one she had frequently worn, as she particularly
desired to avoid anything like vulgar display. " And
to tell the truth," she added, " there was as Kttle as pos-
sible of any gown at all, dress in that day being chiefly

an aid in setting off beauty to advantage," which con-

46

ELIZABETH PATTERSON

curs with the statement made by a man who was
present at the wedding, to the effect that he could have
put all the clothes worn by the bride into his pocket.

The honeymoon days of Jerome and Elizabeth were
passed at her father's estate outside of Baltimore,
" Homestead." Late in January they were mingling
with the merrymakers one afternoon in Market Street.
There was good sleighing, and the crisp air rang with
the joyousness of an old-time winter. A snowball,
sent with the unerring aim and democratic disregard of
a small boy of the town, struck Elizabeth. Jerome
was outraged at the indignity, and offered a reward of
five hundred dollars for the discovery of the youthful
miscreant. How trivial seems this " missile light as air"
by comparison with those shafts sped later by a not less
unerring hand, and striking into the very soul of her
womanhood, Jerome making no effort to avert them.

In February this bride and groom of the early cen-
tury went to Washington, whither since have wended
their way so many happy bridal couples. Of the jour-
ney there, made in a stage-coach. General Samuel Smith,
member of Congress from Maryland, wrote to Mr. Wil-
liam Patterson describing the runaway of the horses as
they entered the city and Betsy's presence of mind.
The driver having been thrown from his seat, Jerome
sprang from the coach with the hope of catching the
horses. But as they still sped on, and her danger in-
creased as they penetrated towards the centre of the
straggling little capital, Elizabeth opened the door and
jumped out into the snow without injury.

47

FAMOUS AMERICAN BELLES

While in Washington they were the guests of the
French Minister, General Tureau. Aaron Burr, then
Vice-President of the United States, meeting Elizabeth
at this time, wrote to his daughter Theodosia, whom he
thought Elizabeth much resembled, and referred to her
as "a charming little woman with sense, spirit, and
sprightliness."

Jerome's thoughts were already turning towards
France, where every effort was being made to bring
about his return — alone. While in New York during
the following summer he was made acquainted with the
annulment of his marriage, as follows : " By an Act of
the 1 1 Ventose, all the civil officers of the Empire
are prohibited from receiving on their registers the
transcription of the act of celebration of a pretended
marriage that Jerome Bonaparte has contracted in a
foreign country during the age of minority, without the
consent of his mother and without the publication in
the place of his nativity."

In February following the marriage Mr. William
Patterson had written to our Minister at Paris, Robert
Livingston, enclosing him letters from the President
and Secretary of State, to be presented to Napoleon
with the hope of obtaining his approval, or at least
mitigating any displeasure the marriage might have
caused. " I can assure you," he wrote to Livingston,
"that I never directly or indirectly countenanced or
gave Mr. Bonaparte the smallest encouragement to
address my daughter, but, on the contrary, resisted his
pretensions by every means in my power consistent

48

ELIZABETH PATTERSON

with discretion. Finding, however, that the mutual
attachment they had formed for each other was such that
nothing short of force or violence could prevent their
union, I with much reluctance consented to their wishes."

He had, moreover, despatched his eldest son, Robert
Patterson, to Paris, to discover which way the wind of
the imperial temper blew. As the matter lay rather
outside the pale of usual diplomatic issues, it required
most delicate manipulation, and while young Patterson
received kindly yet cautious expressions of interest and
good-will from Napoleon's brothers, an ominous and
forbidding silence enveloped the First Consul. His
indignation increased with Jerome's continued absence,
and when at length he spoke through his Minister of
Marine, it was to bid Jerome, as lieutenant of the fleet,
to return to France, at the same time forbidding all
captains of French vessels to receive on board "the
young person to whom Jerome had attached himself."
Through the same channel Napoleon offered his for-
giveness to Jerome on condition that he abandon Eliza-
beth and return to France, there to associate himself
with his fortunes. Should he persist in bringing her,
she would not be allowed to put foot on French terri-
tory. Jerome's mother wrote to him at the same time,
suggesting that he return to France alone and send his
wife to Holland. Robert Patterson, however, who suc-
ceeded admirably in keeping himself posted on the varia-
tions in the attitude of Jerome's family, advised that
Jerome should not return to France without his wife.

Though he made several efforts during the year that

4 49

FAMOUS AMERICAN BELLES

followed to return thither, there is only one on record
when it was his purpose to sail alone.

In September, 1804, General Armstrong sailed from
New York to replace Livingston at Paris. He had
agreed with Jerome to take Madame Bonaparte with
him, Jerome himself intending to go on one of the
French frigates then in New York harbor. She could
thus, at least, have landed in France as a member of
the family of the American minister, who might have
succeeded in presenting her to Napoleon, with whom
she could, no doubt, have pleaded her cause with more
effect than could have been produced by any amount
of diplomatic correspondence or family intervention.
She had the gifts which he most admired in women,
great personal beauty and wit, and though the latter
might have been too keen for his entire appreciation,
she no doubt would have been shrewd enough to tem-
per it to his taste.

She wrote her father from New York, September 5,
1804, of her disappointment at Armstrong's having
sailed without her. The reason given was that Jerome
and Elizabeth had arrived by stage a few hours after
£he ship had sailed.

An effort to sail during the following month ended
in shipwreck off Pilot Town, where they were finally
landed and temporarily housed by one of the inhabi-
tants, on whose clothes-line Madame Bonaparte dried
her wardrobe, and from whose hospitable board she
enjoyed a dinner of roast goose with apple-sauce, being
in exuberant spirits over her rescue.

50

ELIZABETH PATTERSON

On March 1 1, 1805, they finally made their departure
from Baltimore in the " Erin," a ship belonging to Mr.
Patterson. Though they sailed at an early hour in the
morning, and the arrangements for their departure had
been conducted with much secrecy. General Tureau
wrote from Washington two days later to Mr. Patter-
son to ask what disposition had been made of Jerome's
four carriage-horses, and to suggest, if they were to be
sold, that he should like to be considered as a pur-
chaser.

The " Erin" reached Lisbon on April 2, whence Je-
rome wrote in English to his father-in-law of their safe
arrival, and took the opportunity to express his affection
for and gratitude towards his second family. He spoke
of Elizabeth having been very sea-sick, and added, —

" But you know as well as any body that sea-sick
never has killed nobody."

Napoleon's ambassador met the ship upon its arrival,
and called upon Elizabeth to ask what he could do for
her, addressing her as Miss Patterson.

*' Tell your master," she replied, " that Madame
Bonaparte is ambitious, and demands her rights as a
member of the Imperial family."

She was forbidden to land, and Jerome, taking that
farewell of her which fate had destined should be his
last, went overland to Paris, while the " Erin" sailed for
Amsterdam.

On his way to Paris Jerome met General and
Madame Junot en route for their new post in Spain.
He breakfasted with them and opened his anxious

51

FAMOUS AMERICAN BELLES

young heart to them, showing them a miniature of
Elizabeth, from whom, he declared, nothing should ever
separate him.

Upon reaching Paris he went at once to Malmaison
and sought an audience with Napoleon, who refused to
see him, bidding him write what he wished to say. He
wrote, simply announcing his arrival, and received the
following reply :

" I have received your letter this morning. There
are no faults you have committed which may not be
effaced in my eyes by a sincere repentance. Your
marriage is null and void, both from a religious and
a legal point of view. I will never acknowledge it.
Write Miss Patterson to return to the United States,
and tell her it is not possible to give things another
turn. On condition of her return to America, I will
allow her a pension of sixty thousand francs a year,
provided she does not take the name of my family, to
which she has no right, her marriage having no exist-
ence."

From this position Napoleon never swerved. The
annuity was paid to Elizabeth after her return to
America until the fall of the Empire, and formed the
basis of the fortune of one and a half million dol-
lars, accumulated through a long life of frugality and
cautious investment, of which she died possessed.

The reply of Pope Pius, to whom Napoleon ap-
pealed for the annulment of the marriage, accompany-
ing his request with a costly gold tiara, to the effect
that after mature deliberation he had been able to dis-

52

ELIZABETH PATTERSON

cover no grounds on which the marriage could be can-
celled, though it chagrined the Emperor to an extent
which he never forgave, did not yet alter thi! stand
he had taken. When Jerome was finally admitted to
his presence, he greeted him with that magnetic smile
whose potency swayed men and women alike.

" So, sir, you are the first of the family," he said,
" who has shamefully abandoned his post. It will re-
quire many splendid actions to wipe off that stain from
your reputation. As to your love-affair with your little
girl, I pay no attention to it."

The " Erin," meanwhile, arrived in the Texel Roads,
where, though flying the flag of a friendly power, and a
merchant vessel whose clearance from Baltimore showed
that she carried no guns, she was placed under guard
of two French men-of-war and all communication with
the shore prohibited. Through the intercession of
Sylvanus Bourne, our Consul at Amsterdam, she was
permitted at the expiration of a week to depart, and,
bearing her full measure of human desolation, she
headed towards the shores of England. The fame of
her fair passenger had preceded her, and so large a con-
course of people had gathered at Dover to witness the
landing of Madame Jerome Bonaparte that Mr. Pitt,
then Prime Minister of England, sent a military escort
to protect her from possible annoyance of a sympa-
thetic though curious throng.

At Camberwell, near London, her son was born on
the 7th of July, 1805, and named Jerome Napoleon.

In June of that year, two months after his return,

53

FAMOUS AMERICAN BELLES

Jerome had been restored to his rank in the navy and
was cruising off Genoa, whence he wrote, through his
secretary, Alexander le Camus, to Mr. WiUiam Pat-
terson, of Baltimore, expressing his dissatisfaction at
Elizabeth's having gone to England, that country being
at the time at war with France. The tone of the letter
betrays th^ change that was already working in Jerome's
feelings, though he was at that time sending Elizabeth
by every available opportunity messages and pledges
of his unswerving love for her.

When we judge him, let us bear in mind not only
his youth and all the circumstances of his life, but,
above all, that soul-crushing will which he, weakly
enough it seems to us, was striving to stand against.

In a subsequent letter to Mr. Patterson, written also
by Mr. le Camus, in the course of which Jerome ex-
pressed the desire that Elizabeth should return to
America and wait there in her own home till he ob-
tained her recall from the Emperor, one feels instinc-
tively that between the lines is written the finale to the
short chapter of the romance of Elizabeth Patterson
and Jerome Bonaparte.

She returned to her father's home in the fall, though
she had written shortly before that she was glad to be
among strangers, because " in Baltimore, where people
are always on the watch," she would be more observed.

On August 12, 1807, Jerome married Princess
Frederika Catherine, daughter of the King of Wurtem-
berg. As King of Westphalia he offered Elizabeth a
home within his dominions, with the title of Princess

54

ELIZABETH PATTERSON

of Smalcalden and a pension of two hundred thou-
sand francs per year. In regard to the former, she re-
plied that Westphalia was a large kingdom, but not
quite large enough for two queens, and with regard to
the pension, having already accepted Napoleon's an-
nuity of sixty thousand francs, she made the oft-quoted
response that she preferred " being sheltered under the
wing of an eagle to being suspended from the bill of a
goose."

Napoleon, with his high appreciation of a bon mot^
desired to know what favor he could bestow upon a
woman capable of this witticism. Elizabeth replied
through the French Minister at Washington that she
was ambitious, and would like to be a duchess.

The Emperor promised the gift, but never conferred
it. Notwithstanding her unremitting yet ever futile
struggle for recognition, Madame Bonaparte cherished
always the most enthusiastic admiration for the genius
of the man who had blighted her life. In one of her
letters to her father, written from Europe, whither she
returned after the fall of the Empire, she said, " They
do not in England pretend to revile Napoleon as we
have done. His stupendous abilities are admitted ; his
misfortunes almost respected by his enemies. I listen
silently to any discussion in which he bears a part. I
easily perceive that he has more justice done him here
than with us."

In a subsequent letter she details more fully her atti-
tude towards the entire family.

" I cannot say," she writes, also to her father, " that

55

FAMOUS AMERICAN BELLES

I have the least reliance on that family, although I am
inclined to reciprocate their kind words and receive their
offers of friendship without allowing myself to be de-
ceived by either." And farther on in the same letter
she says, in regard to allowing her son to visit Pauline
Bonaparte, then the Princess Borghese, at Rome, " My
resolution is uninfluenced by personal feelings, never
having felt the least resentment towards any individual
of that family, who certainly injured me, but not from
motives which could offend me. I was sacrificed to
political considerations, not to the gratification of bad
feelings, and under the pressure of insupportable dis-
appointment became not unjust."

From her letters there seem to have been frequent
rumors afloat in regard to her marrying again, both in
this country and in Europe, where she was greatly ad-
mired. In one letter to her father, written in 1823, she
says that while the American newspapers were marry-
ing her she was making her will.

Though she obtained from the Maryland Legislature
a divorce, after the fall of Napoleon, it seems to have
been rather as a precautionary measure against any pos-
sible demands Jerome might make upon her financially
than with a view to marrying again.

Tom Moore, whom Lady Morgan sent to her with
a letter of introduction, afterwards described her as a
beautiful woman, but destitute of all sentiment and
with a total disbelief in love, on which, indeed, she be-
stowed only ridicule. There can be no doubt, however,
of the concern and tenderness which she expended upon

56

ELIZABETH PATTERSON

a dog, Le Loup, which belonged to her son, and which
she said was " superior to half the persons one meets in
the world." There are many traditions of her wit,
which, though tinged with asperity, was ever ready and
scintillating. The Honorable Mr. Dundas, who sat
beside her at a dinner in London, she speared so un-
sparingly with the shafts of her sarcasm that his egotism
never forgave her. When he asked her, finally, if she
had read Captain Basil Hall's book on America, she
replied affirm.atively. "And did you observe," he
continued, bluntly, with the hope of avenging his
wounded self-love, " that he called all Americans vul-
garians?" "Yes," replied Madame Bonaparte, while
the table paused to listen, " and I was not surprised.
Were the Americans descendants of the Indians and
Esquimaux, I should have been. But being the direct
descendants of the English, nothing is more natural
than that they should be vulgarians." For both her wit
and her beauty she was admired by men and women
of fastidious taste, among whom were Sir Charles and
Lady Morgan, Talleyrand, Gortschakoff, and Madame
de Stael. She so fascinated the Prince of Wurtem-
berg, uncle of Jerome's second wife, that he confessed
his wonderment that Jerome could ever have aban-
doned her. " Si elle n'est pas reine de Westphalie, elle
est au moins reine des coeurs," was Baron Bonsteller's
tribute to her.

She seldom alluded to Jerome, though she believed
that she always stood first in his heart. She referred in
a letter to her father to the probabiHty of his coming

57

FAMOUS AMERICAN BELLES

to Rome while she was there, but added that she
should not see him, " nor would he like it himself after
the unhandsome way in which he has always conducted
himself I shall hold my tongue, which is all I can
possibly do for him."

Though the greater part of her life was spent in
Europe, and she was for a time on terms of consider-
able intimacy with his family, she met Jerome but
once, when they passed each other in the gallery of
the Pitti Palace in Florence, Jerome with the Princess
Catherine upon his arm. Though they recognized
each other, they passed without greeting, Jerome ex-
claiming, "That was my American wife." Jerome
Napoleon, the son of his American wife, was frequently
his guest, and was treated with much kindness by the
Princess Catherine. Jerome, however, added practi-
cally nothing to this son's material comfort, much to
his mother's chagrin, and at his death in i860 it was
found that he had not even mentioned his name in his
will, a lack of recognition which wounded both mother
and son in a more profound sense than his lifelong
failure to make provision for him had done. So great
was his son's resemblance to his family, and par-
ticularly to the Emperor, that the charge d'affaires of
France at Amsterdam, in 1820, refused his mother a
passport for him to travel through France. It was a
strange coincidence that Madame Jerome Bonaparte
herself should bear a remarkable resemblance to the
Bonaparte family, particularly to Napoleon and Pau-
line, even having some of their mannerisms.

58

ELIZABETH PATTERSON

In August, 1855, Louis Napoleon offered to create
Jerome Napoleon Bonaparte Duke of Sartene, but he
declined the honor, as the object was to take away his
name and the rights he possessed as his father's eldest
son.

At the request of his half-brother a family council
was called, before which the celebrated Berryer pleaded
the cause of Madame Jerome Bonaparte and her son,
whose rights were ultimately defined as limited exclu-
sively to the use of the name.

On November 3, 1829, Jerome Napoleon Bona-
parte, to his mother's intense dissatisfaction and dis-
appointment, married an American, the lovely Miss
Susan Mary Williams, of Baltimore. During a long
residence abroad Madame Bonaparte had become im-
bued with the idea that it was a duty her son owed
both to her and to himself to ally himself matrimonially
with some European family of distinction. Writing
to her father from Florence, where she was residing at
the time of her son's marriage, she said, " I would
rather die than marry any one in Baltimore, but if my
son does not feel as I do upon this subject, of course
he is quite at liberty to act as he likes best."

Her father died in 1835. He had never been in
sympathy with her desire to live in a foreign country,
and had frequently upbraided her for her prolonged
absence from home. In his will he denounced her as
an undutiful daughter, bequeathing her a few small
houses besides the home in which she was born, on the
east side of South Street, with the lot surrounding it.

59

FAMOUS AMERICAN BELLES

In April, 1879, Madame Bonaparte, who was then
in her ninety-fifth year, having outUved her son and
all of her own generation, passed from the sphere
where she had been so conspicuous a figure. She died
in a boarding-house in her native city, where she had
acquired the reputation of being a keen, eccentric old
woman. The sorrows of her youth, belonging to the
early days of the country, were too remote to be re-
membered by her later-day contemporaries, who dis-
covered in her no trace of the bewitching Elizabeth
Patterson who had taken by storm the heart of the
youthful Prince Jerome.

She rests to-day in Greenmount Cemetery, Balti-
more, in a small triangular lot which she selected
shortly before her death, saying that as she had been
alone in hfe, so she wished to be in death. On her
monument are graven the words that express so much
for her, — " After Ufe's fitful fever she sleeps well."

60

THE CATON SISTERS

AMONG the belles of the early century loom the
forms of those gracious women whose names
are interwoven with those of the most historic
figures of their age, the Caton sisters of Baltimore.
Granddaughters of Charles Carroll of Carrollton, one
of the most illustrious Americans of the period, they
became through marriage identified with the most dis-
tinguished families in England.

In 1787 Richard Caton, an Englishman who had
settled in Baltimore two years before, and engaged in
the manufacture of cotton goods, succeeded in winning
the fair hand of Mary Carroll. Rumor said that it had
been already partially plighted to her cousin John Car,
roll of Duddington Manor. Cousin " Longlegs," how-
ever, as Kitty, her irreverent younger sister, called him-
was in Europe at the time with her brother Charles,
and in those days of slow travel Mary had probably
capitulated to the young Briton before John even knew
that he had a rival.

Her father, who was reputed the wealthiest man in
America, and who provided liberally both for his chil-
dren and grandchildren, settled upon Mary at the time

6z

FAMOUS AMERICAN BELLES

of her marriage to Richard Caton, the beautiful estate
of " Brookland Wood," in the centre of the suburb
which has since sprung up and been named for them,
Catonsville. Their four daughters were born there and
grew up to beautiful womanhood, — Mary, EUzabeth,
Louisa, and Emily. They derived every grace of mind
and body from a cultivated and accomplished mother
who had been educated abroad, and who, accompany-
ing her father to Philadelphia when Congress met there,
had known the best there was of social life in America.
Closely associated, moreover, from their infancy with
their grandfather, a most courtly gentleman, who ever
beheld in woman an object worthy of his most chival-
rous devotion, they bore every evidence of that innate
refinement which created distinction for them in Eng-
land as the " American Graces."

The life at that time surrounding such men as
Carroll was idyllic. Honored by his countrymen,
blessed with the wealth giving him every material com-
fort and luxury, owning his town house, his estate of
Doughoregan, and his plantation the famous Carrollton,
sought out by the most distinguished men and women
at home and from abroad, to say nothing of the myriad
resources which such a man as Carroll possessed within
himself, he already saw his family — the third genera-
tion born in Am.erica — well established, with the roof-
trees of his son and daughters close by his own. His
granddaughters were much with him, and though they
were the belles of Baltimore town from their earliest
girlhood, a very delightful phase of their life was that

62

THE CATON SISTERS

portion of it spent on their own and their grandfather's
estates. There is frequent mention both in the journal
and letters of Charles Carroll of visits from them and
also of that princely hospitality that is ever associated
with the names of many of the old Maryland estates.

In one letter he alludes to a ball to be given by Cap-
tain Charles Ridgley of " Hampton," for which three
hundred invitations were out, and to which Mary,
Betsy, and Louisa were all going. In another he men-
tions a ball given by Louisa, who was entertaining the
Misses Pinkney at his place at Annapolis.

Many a belle in those days went to balls on horse-
back with a blanket thrown over her muslin gown to
protect it from the dust. Yet it was not too much of
an undertaking to go all the way from Annapolis to
Baltimore, or vice versa, for the pleasure of being present
at somebody's ball or dinner-party. Roads and weather
permitting, the Catons occasionally made the trip in
winter time in a "sled." Roads and weather had
much to do with the timing of one's visits in those
days of primitive transportation facilities when Charles
Carroll recorded that he sent his servant from Dongho-
regan with a led mare to fetch Miss Nancy Robinson
who had been visiting at Homewood, his son's estate.

Nature lent her perfecting hand to the rural life of
these people, for nowhere was she ever more munificent
in the bestowal of her epicurean gifts than in the State
of Maryland, whose lands and whose waters alike cater
to the gastronomic proclivities of the I?on vivant.

Oliver Wendell Holmes at a later period attributed a

63

FAMOUS AMERICAN BELLES

lack of appreciation of literature which he fancied he
had detected among the Baltimoreans to the prepon-
derance of these very blessings, and suggested that the
highest monument in the city should be crowned with
a canvas-back duck.

There were club-houses and merrymaking in plenty,
with oysters, soft-shell crabs, terrapin, canvas-back
ducks, and a roasted young pig with an apple in its
mouth, or a turkey stuffed with oysters, as piece de resis-
tance, with a nip of punch for sauce. Miss R^idgley
depicts it very temptingly in her little book.

Foremost among the beautiful women whose pres-
ence lent piquancy to this life were the Catons. In
1807 Mary, who was at the time nineteen years old,
was married to Robert Patterson, the eldest son of
William Patterson. She thus became the sister-in-law
of the unhappy Madame Jerome Bonaparte, between
whom and herself there seeps to have existed no great
sympathy, through no fault of Mary Caton's.

The event was a welcome one to WiUiam Patterson,
who was at the time the wealthiest merchant in America.
The wedding ceremony was performed in the private
chapel of the Carroll family by Archbishop Carroll,
who four years previously had similarly united Eliza-
beth Patterson and Jerome Bonaparte. In April, 1811,
Robert and his wife, accompanied by her sisters Eliza-
beth and Louisa, went abroad, sailing from Baltimore
on one of his father's ships and landing in Lisbon in
the latter part of May. Robert Patterson had already
travelled and lived much in Europe. To the Catons it

64

Mary Caton

(Lady Wellesley)

From portrait by Sir Thomas Lawrence

THE CATON SISTERS

was the first of a series of numerous trans-Atlantic
trips.

While in Spain they met the Duke of Wellington,
who was there at that time conducting the peninsular
war, and Colonel Sir Felton Bathurst Hervey, who had
been his aide-de-camp at Waterloo and whom Louisa
Caton afterwards married. Charles Carroll, writing of
Hervey after his marriage to Louisa, which occurred on
the 1st of March, 1817, said, "All who know him
love him." He was a gallant soldier and had lost his
right arm at Vittoria.

The Duke of Wellington's ardent admiration for
Mrs. Patterson drew him within the wake of the Httle
American party as they progressed in their travels over
Europe, lending them the prestige which opened for
them the most exclusive houses in England. Ap-
parent as his admiration was, not the least breath of
scandal ever touched the name of this beautiful young
matron. The Prince Regent, to whom Wellington
presented her, spoke later to Richard Rush, the Ameri-
can Minister, of her unusual beauty. When she came,
later in life, into contact with William IV. as first lady
in waiting at Windsor, she won the sincere admiration
of that sovereign on account of the high standard of
morality which she maintained.

After the marriage of Hervey and Louisa Caton
they were entertained by the Duke of Wellington at
Walmer Castle. The Duchess of Rutland gave them
a ball, and bestowed upon the sisters on that memor-
able night the title under which they became famous, — *
5 65

FAMOUS AMERICAN BELLES

the " American Graces.*' Hervey's death occurred in
1819, and Robert Patterson's at Baltimore in the fall
of 1822. The widow of the latter shortly afterwards
rejoined her sisters in England, where they were again
entertained at Wellington's country-seat. While there
they met for the first time his eldest brother, Richard
Wellesley, Earl of Mornington, and like himself a sol-
dier and a statesman. In 1797 he had been made
Governor of India by George III., who, in return for
the services he rendered there, had created him Marquis
of Wellesley. At the time he met Mrs. Patterson and
her sisters he was Lord Lieutenant of Ireland. Two
years later, when Mrs. Patterson and Elizabeth Caton
visited Dublin, he entertained them royally, bestowing
the most devoted attentions upon the former, to whom
he subsequently offered himself

After a brief engagement they were married at the
viceregal castle, the ceremony being performed twice,
to accord with the religious convictions of both the
bride and the groom, the Archbishop of Dublin marry-
ing them according to the rites of the Catholic Church,
and the Lord Primate of Ireland according to those
of the Church of England.

Unusual magnificence marked the festivities which
followed this event, as well as those of the remainder
of Lord Mornington 's reign as. viceroy.

On July 4, 1827, Bishop England, of South Caro-
lina, gave the following toast to Charles Carroll, who
was the last survivor of the signers of the Declaration
of Independence : '^ To Charles Carroll of Carrollton :

66

THE CATON SISTERS

in the land from which his grandfather fled in terror
his granddaughter now reigns a queen."

It was rather a strange coincidence that two daughters
of the Httle American town of Baltimore, Elizabeth
Patterson and Mary Caton, neighbors and contempo-
raries, should have married brothers of two of the most
formidable characters in modern history, — Napoleon
Bonaparte, the self-styled conqueror of the world, and
the Duke of Wellington, his conqueror.

Madame Jerome Bonaparte, who was in Europe at
the time of her sister-in-law's second marriage, thus
wrote to her father concerning it :

"Havre, November 21, 1825.
*' Dear Sir, — I write by this packet to announce to you the marriage
of Mrs. Robert Patterson. Mrs. Brown received a letter from Betsy
Caton the day on which it was to take place. She has made the
greatest match that any woman ever made. . . . The Marquis of
Wellesley is Lord Lieutenant of Ireland. He is sixty-five. He
married an Italian singer, by whom he had a family of children. She
is dead. He has no fortune. On the contrary, he. is over head and
ears in debt. His salary is ;^3 5jOOO per annum as Lord Lieutenant
of Ireland. He will be there eighteen months longer, and if the
King does not give him another place he is entitled as a poor noble-
man to at least a thousand pounds a year. He is brother of the
Duke of Wellington. Mary's fortune is reported in Europe to be
^800,000 cash. It has been mentioned in all the papers at that
sum."

Wellesley retained his position in Ireland till 1828.
He was then appointed Controller of the Royal House-
hold of William IV., and his wife first lady in waiting

67

FAMOUS AMERICAN BELLES

at Windsor Castle. Wellesley's death occurred in
1842, the Marchioness surviving him over eleven years.
The latter part of her life was spent at the Royal Palace
at Hampton Court, where Queen Victoria presented
her with a house in recognition of her husband's ser-
vices.

Louisa Caton was married for the second time in
1828 to the eldest son of the Duke of Leeds, Francis
Godolphin D'Arcy Osbome, Marquis of Carmarthen,
who came into his title and estates ten years later.

This marriage called forth another letter from Mad-
ame Jerome Bonaparte to her father : " Louisa has
made a great match. He is very handsome, not more
than thirty-eight, and will be a duke with £30,000 a
year."

Elizabeth Caton married once, and that much later
in life than her sisters. She became, in 1836, the wife
of Baron Stafford, whose family name was Jerning-
ham.

Emily Caton, the youngest of the four sisters, and
the only one who left descendants, married John Mac-
Tavish, a Scotchman, who had settled in Canada, whence
he was sent as consul to Baltimore. Josiah Quincy,
who met her at dinner at her grandfather's in 1 826, re-
corded in his journal that he had been much impressed
with her air of high breeding.

6$

MARGARET O'NEILL

(mRS. JOHN H. EATOn)

TO the student of social history few careers sur-
pass in interest that of Margaret O'Neill. Bom
of humble parentage, she ran the gamut of
social possibilities, exercising more influence over the
political destinies of her country than any other Ameri-
can woman has ever done.

Unlike other great belles who owe their fame to the
universal admiration they evoke, Margaret O'Neill
owed hers quite as much to the animosity she roused.
Her cause hotly espoused by the President of the
United States, her conduct made the subject of cabinet
debates, she rose to fame as broad as the land of her
birth, and later beyond the seas to a fame unshadowed
by enmity, though not dearer to her patriotic soul.
Born late in the last century, she came to be a belle in
so far as having beaux makes a girl a belle in the days
when the native Washington girl had few rivals. The
shriek of Fulton's steamboat had not yet startled the
world. The stage-coach was the universal means of
conveyance, though the daughters of some Southern
and Western Congressmen, from districts unfamiliar even

with its lumbering proportions, ambitious to taste the

69

FAMOUS AMERICAN BELLES

pleasures of a season at the capital, used frequently to
make the tedious journey on horseback. Her girlhood
belleship had well terminated, indeed she had married
and brought children into the world, before the com-
pletion of the great canal in 1-826, which made the
more sanguine voyager of that day hopeful that even-
tually eight miles might be travelled in an hour !

Though she never knew the exact date of her birth,
she had heard it frequently related that she was two
weeks old at the time of Washington's funeral, Decem-
ber 1 8, 1 799. She was the eldest daughter of William
O'Neill, a descendant of the O'Neills of Ulster County,
Ireland, and himself a native of New Jersey, who had
migrated to the capital with the hope of improving his
fortunes. There he opened a tavern in the western
section of the city, a short half-mile from the Presi-
dent's house. He was a genial host, and his house
soon attained popularity with the jeunesse doree, as well
as with military men and Congressmen, though it was
a long way from the Capitol. The Union Tavern, in
Georgetown, however, which was also popular with
our early law-makers, was still farther away. From its
door to the Capitol the old 'bus known as the Royal
George, one of Washington's earliest institutions, made
frequent trips, stopping at O'Neill's and other taverns
and boarding-houses along the route to pick up its
patrons.

Margaret grew up in the unconventional atmosphere
of the tavern, a type of undisciplined American girl-
hood, wayward, high spirited, full of generous impulses,

70

MARGARET O'NEILL

her mind fed on impetuous and misguided admiration,
and herself blessed with a magnetic soul that drew
most men and many women irresistibly to her. She
was a toast that stirred the hearts of the most phleg-
matic of mankind and evoked unparalleled enthusiasm
from those of more ardent temperament. Hers was
the highest type of Irish beauty, a marvellously white
skin, soft gray eyes, warm chestnut hair that curled
above an expressive brow, exquisite features, a small
round chin, a delicately beautiful figure of medium
height, with an erect carriage and her spirited head
nobly poised.

The "Health," written by Edward C. Pinkney,
whom Edgar Allen Poe placed first in his estimate of
lyric poets of America, is said to have been inspired by
her in 1824.

«* I fill this cup to one made up of lovliness alone,
A woman, of her gentle sex the seeming paragon.
To whom the better elements and kindly stars have given
A form so fair that, like the air, 'tis less of earth than heaven.

" Her every tone is music's own, like those of morning birds.
And something more than melody dwells ever in her words ;
The coinage of her heart are they, and from her lips each flows.
As one may see the burthened bee forth issue from the rose.

'* Of her bright face one glance will trace a picture on the brain,
And of her voice, in echoing hearts a sound must long remain ;
And memory such as mine of her so very much endures.
When death is nigh, my latest sigh will not be life's, but hers.

71

FAMOUS AMERICAN BELLES

•' Affections are as naught to her, the measure of her hours ;
Her feelings have the fragrancy, the freshness of young flowers.
And lovely passions, changing oft, so fill her, she appears
The image of themselves by turns the idol of past years.

" I filled this cup to one made up of loveliness alone,
A woman, of her gentle sex the seeming paragon.
Her health ! And would on earth there stood some more of such

a frame.
That life might be all poetry and weariness a name."

She went to school at Mrs. Hayward's seminary, and
later to Mr. Kirk. She also attended a dancing-school
that gave exhibitions of the grace and proficiency of
its pupils in the parlors of the Union Tavern in George-
town. At one of these exhibitions Margaret was
crowned by Mrs. Madison, the wife of the President,
as the prettiest girl and most graceful dancer in the
room. Naturally ambitious, this first social triumph
pointed out the possibility of greater ones, to be
achieved only after bitter contests that would have
crushed the spirit of a more sensitive woman.

Her father deeming her sufficiently well educated, in
which opinion she concurred, she quitted school in her
fifteenth year, and, being now a young woman of be-
witching beauty and abundant leisure, she entered ex-
tensively upon her career as a belle.

Two young military men whom her fascinations had
ensnared were at one time on the point of a duel.
With one of them. Captain Root, she had planned an
elopement, and was actually about to descend from her

72

MARGARET O'NEILL

window when she accidentally overturned a flower-pot :
this crashing on the ground below, roused her father
and put an end to her flight. More than that, her
indignant parent carried her off to New York, where
he left her under the wing of his old friend Governor
De Witt Clinton, to go to Madame Nau's school.
Clinton was very severe with the spoiled little beauty,
and the staid atmosphere of his home was not con-
genial to her. She wrote her father very homesick
letters, in one of which she promised that if he would
take her home " neither Root nor branch should ever
tear her from him." Her wit greatly pleased him, and
after he had passed the bon mot around among his
guests and his Peggy's admirers, he went to New York
and brought her home.

It has been said that she was not yet sixteen when
from a window of her father's tavern she for the first
time saw John Bowie Timberlake, as he passed along
Pennsylvania Avenue on horseback. Their acquaint-
ance, engagement, and marriage followed within the
space of a few weeks.

Several years of quiet happiness ensued, during which
three children, a son, who died in infancy, and two
daughters, were born to them.

Timberlake was a purser in the navy, and when he
was ordered to sea duty he closed his little home, and
his wife and children went to her father's to stay during
the time of his absence. He died of asthma aboard
the " Constitution," at Port Mahon.

His widow shortly afterwards married General Eaton,

73

FAMOUS AMERICAN BELLES

who was at that time a United States Senator and a
guest at her father's house. For the first time the Uttle
Peggy O'Neill, of triumphant dancing-school days, felt
that her foot was actually upon the rounds of the social
ladder. John Quincy Adams was President at the
time, and one of the bitterest Presidential campaigns
this country has ever witnessed had just drawn to a
close in the election of Jackson. One victim of the
freedom of press and speech, everywhere indulged in,
was the wife of the President-elect. Her gentle soul,
stung by the breath of slander, which all the vigilance
of a devoted husband had been powerless to avert, had
passed unregretfully from earth. Jackson came to
Washington a bereaved and embittered man.

There was a puritanical tendency among the women
who made up the society of that era, and to whom
Margaret O'Neill appeared as the embodiment of a
sport-loving element that prevailed among men.

Life had a rural quality in those days which it has
since lost. Horse-racing was universal, and the great
race between Eclipse and Sir Henry, run on Long Island
May 27, 1823, for a purse often thousand dollars, was a
national event. Hundreds of thousands of dollars had
been staked, and Peggy O'Neill no doubt was inti-
mately acquainted with some of the heaviest winners
and losers, among the latter of whom was John Ran-
dolph. Though she was far too young to remember
the opening of the first race-track in Washington, No-
vember 3, 1803, she was yet familiar with all the details
of its inauguration, on which occasion both houses of

74

MARGARET O'NEILL

Congress had adjourned, the Senate to have the ceiling
repapered, and the House, which was apparently less re-
sourceful, because it had no pressing business on hand.

Growing up in a public house, she was undoubtedly
familiar with much in the lives of men of which other
women of her day, leading more secluded lives, feigned
ignorance. Yet she had become in no way contami-
nated by the liberal atmosphere she had breathed from
infancy.

General Eaton and his bride returned from their
honeymoon shortly before Jackson's inauguration. A
few of the Senators' wives called upon her, but she was
generally not well received, and slander had already
begun its mischievous work when Jackson appeared in
Washington and swore " by the Eternal" that his little
friend, whom he had known all her life, should not be
defamed.

Her name was already on every lip at the capital,
and there is no doubt that as many went to Jackson's
inauguration ball to see her as to see the President.
They stood on chairs and benches in their efforts to
catch a glimpse of her, and she made a picture worthy
of their endeavors, in her pink gown, with her head-
dress of nodding black plumes.

Eaton was made Secretary of War. He was Jack-
son's old friend, and had labored unremittingly for his
election. Moreover, thought the chivalrous old Presi-
dent, this would insure Mrs. Eaton's triumph. The
women of the cabinet, however, refused to recognize
her. Though Mrs. Calhoun, the wife of the Vice-

75

FAMOUS AMERICAN BELLES

President, had called upon her as a Senator's wife, she
declined to associate with her as the wife of a cabinet
minister. Calhoun, to whom an appeal was made,
declared himself powerless, as " the quarrels of women,
like those of the Medes and Persians, admitted of
neither inquiry nor explanation."

Van Buren, Secretary of State, and Barry, Post-
Master-General, the former a widower and the latter a
bachelor, stood aloof from the tempest in which their
fellow-officials were engulfed. That astute politician
and prince of diplomats, Martin Van Buren, won
Jackson's undying friendship by the warmth with
which he took up his friend's cause. He had been a
beau at evening functions when he was in the Senate,
and he knew the social status of every one at Wash-
ington, and precisely what brought every stranger to
the capital. While he admired Mrs. Eaton and de-
sired to defend her, he also undoubtedly realized all the
advantages to be gained by such a course.

The spirit of hostility gradually spread to every
branch of society. The Diplomatic Corps became in-
volved ; Vaughn, the British minister, and Baron Krud-
ner, the Russian envoy, both bachelors, ranged them-
selves beneath Mrs. Eaton's standard. They feted and
dined her, and gave her substantial evidence of their
adherence to her cause. Huygens, the Dutch minister,
having a wife who belonged to the opposition, was less
fortunate. Finding herself placed next to Mrs. Eaton
at dinner on one occasion, Mrs. Huygens took her

husband's arm and turned her back upon the assem-

76

MARGARET O'NEILL

blage. While all who witnessed the affront were ap-
palled into an awkward silence, Mrs. Eaton, following
the retreating form with critical eyes, commented ad-
miringly upon her fine carriage.

Between her defenders and her defamers her Celtic
blood bore her up, and her sunny soul lost none of its
serenity. One of Jackson's biographers, however,
states that when the matter reached the ears of the irate
President, he threatened to demand Huygens's recall
unless he and his wife forthwith apologize to Mrs.
Eaton.

The contest waxed warmer day by day, both houses
of Congress furnishing recruits to one side or the
other.

The cabinet was dubbed the "Petticoat Cabinet,"
and Mrs. Eaton's fame as Bellona, the Goddess of War,
spread through the land. Calhoun attacked the Presi-
dent for retaining in his cabinet an element of so much
discord. But Jackson was a true knight, and his friend-
ship was stanch.

The bitter feeling, meanwhile, among the cabinet
ministers had attained such a pitch that they could no
longer come together amicably. Their resignations
were tendered to the President and accepted, and a new
cabinet was formed.

It was during a recess of Congress. Van Buren was
sent as minister to England, :where he was cordially
received. When Congress reassembled, however, the
Senate refused to confirm his appointment, Calhoun
casting the decisive vote.

77

FAMOUS AMERICAN BELLES

A letter of Daniel Webster's, written about this time,
reveals the seriousness of the situation. " It is odd
enough," he wrote, " that the consequences of this dis-
pute in the social and fashionable world are producing
great political effects, and may very probably determine
who shall be successor to the present Chief Magis-
trate." And they did. Jackson's power and popu-
larity were such that he was in a position to dictate to
his party the choice of his successor. His choice fell
upon Van Buren, who had undoubtedly labored for
him in the days of his bitter fight for the Presidency,
and who had further and effectually endeared himself to
his chief by his zealous defence of Mrs. Eaton, who
in Jackson's eyes was not only a fair and beautiful
woman, but the representative of oppressed woman-
hood.

General Eaton was appointed governor to the Terri-
tory of Florida, and later he was sent as our minister
to the court of Madrid.

This ended Mrs. Eaton's social conflict. She was
graciously received and universally admired in that
land of aristocrats, and her long residence there and in
Paris, whither she went before returning to this country,
formed one of the happiest periods of her life.

One of her daughters, the beautiful Virginia Timber-
lake, familiarly known among the men and women
who were young with her, as " Ginger" Timberlake,
married the Duke de Sampoyo and went to live in
France, where, in turn, one of her daughters has re-
cently married a son of the elder Rothschild. Mar-

78

MARGARET O'NEILL

garet, Mrs. Eaton's second daughter, married one of
the Virginia Randolphs. To the children by this mar-
riage, deprived by death of both parents, Mrs. Eaton
devoted many years of her Hfe. General Eaton died
in 1859.

A third marriage contracted by his widow late in
life, and subsequently annulled, was productive of much
unhappiness in her home.

On the 8th of November, 1879, ^^^ reluctantly
gave up her hold on life, whose volume had held tor
her so few blank pages.

In the presence of that foe which every woman fears
most, slander, she had never retreated from the position
she early determined to carry, and which circumstances
proved she was well able to fill. She bore all with a
sweet courage, feeling keenly, but not morbidly, the
world's sting.

Preserving to the end her wonderful elasticity of
spirit, she went out from a life that had been one
of alternate turmoil and triumph, beholding only its
beauties and loving it to the last. " I am not afraid
to die," she said, " but it is such a beautiful world to
leave."

79

CORA LIVINGSTON

(mRS. THOMAS PENNANT BARTON)

CORA LIVINGSTON was born in New Orleans,
"the little Paris of America," on the i6th of
June, 1806, the year of the great eclipse. Her
father, writing to announce her advent to his sister in
New York, said God had given him so fair a daughter
that the sun had hidden its face.

Though she was a great belle with a national reputa-
tion during the decade from 1820 to 1830, those who
attempted an analysis of her charm declared that she
lacked that attribute which many would esteem the
first requisite to belleship, — beauty. Yet she was a nota-
ble example of that subtle power that raises a woman
above her contemporaries, that evokes an involuntary
homage from every eye.

Her mother, writing of her when she was about six-
teen and already the belle of New Orleans, to one who
had never seen her, said, " She is not a beauty, not a
genius, but a good and affectionate child."

Josiah Quincy, that ubiquitous beau who paid his
court to the belles of so many cities, seeing her in
Washington in 1826, declared that she was not hand-
some, while he admitted that she was undoubtedly the

80

CORA LIVINGSTON

greatest belle in the United States. " She has a fine
figure, a pretty face, dances well, and dresses to admira-
tion," he continued, endeavoring to solve the mystery
of the attraction exercised by this exquisite specimen
of womanhood. He further confessed that when he
left her he bore away an image of loveliness and grace
never to be erased, and he went on to quote Burke's
apostrophe to the Queen of France, — " Surely never
lighted on this orb, which she hardly seemed to touch,
a more delightful vision."

She was the daughter of Edward Livingston, a
brother of that Chancellor Livingston who, on the
30th of April, 1789, administered the oath of office to
the first President of the United States, and of an emi-
nently beautiful creole, Louise Moreau.

Fleeing the terrors of the negro insurrection in San
Domingo, Madam Moreau, a young widow, arrived
in New Orleans just as the Louisiana purchase was
consummated and the province became the property
of the United States. French then to the very core,
the city has retained evidences of its origin longer
than any city of the Union. The thrill of anguish
with which it realized that Louisiana had been sold
by Napoleon to the United States "on this 9th of
July, 1803, at seven p.m.," left its indelible impression
upon a people loyal to their nationality and tenacious
of its prerogatives.

The wave of emigration which swept into the newly
acquired territory from the north bore thither Edward
Livingston, of New York. Fortune's reverses had

6 81

FAMOUS AMERICAN BELLES

driven him into the new country with the hope of
finding there a more promising field for his talent and
labors.

The Americans were not well received. Scarcely-
more than a hundred out of the eight thousand inhabi-
tants had greeted the stars and stripes as they were
raised for the first time over the city. So strong, in-
deed, was the prejudice against them that every un-
fortunate occurrence was instantly attributed to them.
Miss Hunt relates that upon one occasion when a ball
was interrupted by an earthquake an indignant old
Creole gentleman exclaimed that the pleasure of ladies
had never thus been interrupted in the days of Spanish
or French dominion.

Livingston's knowledge of the language, his tact,
his adaptiveness, together with his splendid ability,
soon raised him to a conspicuous place at the bar. He
was a widower, thirty-nine years of age, when he mar-
ried Madam Moreau, who was but nineteen. Cora was
the only child of this marriage, and ever, even after her
own marriage, the inseparable companion of both
parents. From her father she derived a sound knowl-
edge of the political questions of the day that made
her an intelligent spectator of the historic period in
which she lived. From her mother she inherited that
grace, mental and physical, that so indelibly impressed
her upon the life of which she formed so brilliant a
part that her name can no more be eliminated from it
than can the names of Andrew Jackson, Martin Van
Buren, Daniel Webster, or Henry Clay.

82

CORA LIVINGSTON

The cultivation of her mind was intrusted to her
uncle, Major August Davezac, from whom she re-
ceived an education of unusual scope. She matured
early, being probably more or less at all times a part
of the social life that surrounded her parents and into
which she made her formal eritree at the age of fourteen.

The social atmosphere of New Orleans at this time
was like that of no other city on the North American
Continent. Creole tastes and institutions were pre-
dominant. The only society of the city was Creole,
and very delightful and very exclusive it was. The
French opera was then, as it has been since, one of its
conspicuous features. Tuesdays and Saturdays were
the nights when the fashionable world was to be seen
in the boxes, and the stage presented nothing more
attractive than the beautifully dressed women of the
audience, with their artistic coiffures. There were
receptions in the boxes between the acts, and a belle's
powers of attraction were thus publicly manifested to
a people ever ready to add the tribute of its homage.

Cora Livingston before she was sixteen years old,
gentle and retiring, shrinking from publicity such as
attaches to belles at this end of the century, was known
throughout the city of her birth as its greatest belle.
In the evenings of the warm season, when the balcony
of her house in Chartres Street was converted into a
reception-room, in the midst of a devoted family she
received not only the admiration of distinguished
guests, but the chivalrous and silent homage of many
an unknown passer-by.

83

FAMOUS AMERICAN BELLES

Frenchmen visiting New Orleans frequently brought
letters of introduction from Lafayette to Livingston,
whom he had known in New York. Cora thus early
became accustomed to an association not only with
people of her own city, but with many eminent cos-
mopolites.

In 1812, when war was declared against England,
New Orleans fell into line and gave glorious proof of
her loyalty. Her prejudices were swallowed up in the
common cause that drew all sections of the country
together, and she became in deed, as she already was
in name, an American city.

General Jackson's friendship for the Livingstons, of
which he gave so many handsome proofs, began at
this time.

In 1822 Edward Livingston was elected to Congress,
and for eleven years thereafter Washington became his
home. While he achieved prominence as a legislator
and statesman, the brilliancy of his daughter was ac-
quiring for her a national reputation. He leased the
Decatur residence on Lafayette Square, within a stone's
throw of the White House, and there gathered about
this distinguished family the most cultured element
of the Washington of that period, — the Calhouns and
their gifted daughter with her perspicuous political
theories, the Adamses, Webster, Clay, Chief Justice
Marshall, Martin Van Buren, Mrs. Madison, their
neighbor across the Park, and the widow of Admiral
Decatur.

It was the exception in those days for members of

84

Cora Livingston

(Mrs. Thomas Pennant Barton)

From miniature by herself

CORA LIVINGSTON

Congress to have their own homes. They lived for
the most part in hotels and boarding-houses, and the
resident branch of society was more distinctive. Mrs.
Decatur, widowed by the famous Bladensburg duel of
March 20, 1820, had retired to her estate at Kalorama,
which became one of the most delightful centres of
resident society. She favored the Livingstons with her
sincere regard, and included them among her guests,
frequently as often as three times in orie week. To
stand forth as she does from among the bevy of bril-
liant women who led the social life of Washington,
at a time when conversation was a fine art, deriving
a stimulus from such men as Randolph, Pinckney,
Webster, and Story, and when women were quite the
equals, in wit, humor, and happy rejoinder, of these
veteran conversationalists, is an indisputable proof of
the superior mental endowments of Cora Livingston.

The Capitol was then as much a feature to the people
of Washington as it is to-day to the people outside of
Washington. Thither the belles and beaux of the
city betook themselves as regularly as the session
opened, walking down Pennsylvania Avenue beneath
the double row of Lombardy poplars, planted when
Jefferson was President. The halls of Congress were
smaller and better adapted to both seeing and hearing
than they are at present. The discussion of public
questions differed also from what one hears nowadays,
there being more spontaneity in the oratory and a larger
number participating, unless, indeed, there was a grand
occasion when the big guns were brought into action,

85

FAMOUS AMERICAN BELLES

and Clay's mellifluous voice was heard, or Webster's
organ notes pealed forth, or Randolph's shrill pipe rent
the air.

A distinctive social feature of the time were the
assembly balls, held usually at some such place as
Carucci's, where Cora Livingston's graceful dancing
again made her the cynosure of all eyes. The set in
which she danced — there were no round dances in those
days — was continually surrounded by admiring specta-
tors, many dancers foregoing that pleasure for the
greater one of watching her. Cora Livingston in a
ball-gown, going through the stately evolutions of a
quadrille, the very embodiment of winsome grace, was
a vision that tarried long afterwards with many who so
beheld her.

It was at Carucci's in the winter of 1826, when Miss
Livingston's belleship was at its height, that the waltz
was first seen in Washington. Baron Stoekelburg, of
the Russian legation, was its sponsor, and all Washing-
ton looked on with dismay, the Baron and his fair
partner, whose name has been lost in oblivion, though
her temerity should have earned her a better fate, having
the floor to themselves.

In 1829 Livingston went into the Senate, and in
May, 1831, he succeeded Van Buren as Secretary of
State, Van Buren having taken the high ground, so
Livingston expressed it, that as a candidate for the
Presidency he should not remain in the Cabinet.

In 1833 President Jackson offered Livingston the
mission to France. Our affairs with that country were

86

CORA LIVINGSTON

in a complicated condition, and Livingston's patriotism
induced him to accept the office.

In April of that year his daughter was married to
Thomas Pennant Barton, a son of Dr. Benjamin Barton,
of Philadelphia. President Jackson appointed him
Secretary of the legation at Paris, sending his appoint-
ment enclosed in a note to Cora, that she might have
the pleasure of presenting it to him with her own
hands. Her intimate acquaintance with the President
dated back to her early childhood, when she was
scarcely taller than the cavalry boots worn by the
hero of the battle of New Orleans, who readily prom-
ised to hang Mitchell, the highest English officer among
the prisoners, if the British so much as touched a hair
of her father's head. He evinced a paternal pride in
the adulation she everywhere received as a woman. At
his request she stood as godmother to his wife's great
niece, Mary Donalson, now Mrs. Wilcox, who was
born in the White House during his term of office.

On their return to America, in 1835, both the Liv-
ingstons and Bartons made their home at Montgomery
Place at Barrytown on the Hudson, an estate of three
hundred acres, which Mr. Livingston had inherited
from his sister, Mrs. Montgomery, the widow of Gen-
eral Montgomery, of Revolutionary fame.

Mr. Barton was a man of scholarly tastes, to which
the tranquil atmosphere of Montgomery Place, with all
its historic associations, together with the close com-
panionship of his gifted wife, was an inspiration. He
accumulated there a library which, at the time of his

87

FAMOUS AMERICAN BELLES

death, was considered one of the most valuable private
collections in America. He bequeathed it to his wife
with the request that she make such disposition of it
as best pleased her. Shortly before her death she ar-
ranged for its transfer to the Boston Library, where it
is preserved, as she knew her husband desired his life
work should be, in its entirety, and known as the Bar-
ton collection.

In 1870 she went to France to superintend there the
publication of a new edition of her father's work on
Penal Laws, which appeared simultaneously with an
English edition. In France a number of her father's
friends were still living, among them Mr. Charles Lucas,
of the French Institute, who wrote the Preface to the
edition brought out in that country.

Having survived her parents and husband, Mrs.
Barton died suddenly at Montgomery Place on the
23d of May, 1873.

The last two winters of her life were spent in Wash-
ington, where, at a time when American society was
singularly rapid, she shone as the last ray from the
glory of an age that was gone, in her whole manner
and bearing the unmistakable gentlewoman.

Going one day to her former home, the Decatur
House, she requested, without giving her name, that
she might be permitted to see the drawing-room.
General Beale, who then occupied the house, of which
his widow still retains possession, in courteous com-
pliance with her request, led the way thither. As she
entered the familiar apartment, memory, conjuring up

88

CORA LIVINGSTON

the forms that were no more, shut out the actual pres-
ence of her host. At length regaining her self-posses-
sion, she said, " A strange desire has of late possessed
me to see again this house in which I spent such happy
days. Just where I am standing now I stood thirty-nine
years ago and was married." " You then were Miss
Cora Livingston," said the general, entering into her
mood and reverting instinctively to the days when her
scintillating wit had made the name famous, though
in the sorrow-laden woman there was no trace of the
glorious girl.

«9

EMILY MARSHALL

(mRS. WILLIAM FOSTER OTIs)

BOSTON claims as her own the greatest American
man of the nineteenth century, and even with
more justice, the most beautiful woman born
in America within the same period. " Emily Mar-
shall as completely filled the ideal of the lovely and
feminine, as did Webster the ideal of the intellectual
and the mascuhne," Quincy, a native of the same State,
has written of her, adding that though superlatives
were intended only for the use of the very young, not
even the cooling influences of half a century enabled
him to avoid them in speaking of her.

He never forgot the first time he saw her walking
on .Dover Street Bridge, Boston's fashionable prom-
enade in those days. " Centuries are likely to come
and go," he continued, " before society will again gaze
spellbound upon a woman so richly endowed with
beauty as was Miss Emily Marshall. She stood be-
fore us, a reversion to that faultless type of structure
which artists have imagined in the past, and to that
ideal loveliness of feminine disposition which poets
have placed in the mythical golden age."

Daniel Webster upon one occasion, during his resi-

90

EMILY MARSHALL

dence in Boston, entered the old Federal Street Theatre,
and was hailed with cheers. A few minutes later
Emily Marshall appeared in her box, when the entire
audience rose as one man and offered her the same
homage it had bestowed upon Webster. To us who
look back upon her, through nearly three-quarters of a
century, she stands forth in such exquisite relief from
her environment that we are conscious of it only where
the light of her beguiling presence touches it.

She was the daughter of Josiah Marshall, a Boston
merchant in the China trade, a man of sagacity and en-
terprise in business affairs, and possessed of those traits
that made him a most lovable father, wisdom, benevo-
lence, and gentleness, with a quaint humor and readi-
ness in repartee that enhanced the bond of comradeship
between himself and his children.

The people of his own State, as well as the inhabi-
tants of the far-away Sandwich Islands, are indebted to
him for many benefactions. To the latter his ships
carried the first missionaries, the materials for the first
houses erected there, and the carpenters to build them.
Upon being charged duty on some salmon which he
had imported from the Columbia River, he pointed out
to Louis Cass the desirability of establishing the claim
of the United States to the region of Oregon.

In the improvements which added so much to the
prosperity of Boston in 1826 he was Mayor Quincy's
constant adviser and abettor.

He was a handsome man, with firm mouth and kin-
dling eyes, and his quick step was well known in the

91

FAMOUS AMERICAN BELLES

business world, where to many a young man he gave
the opportunity which was the opening of a successful
mercantile career.

He was a son of Lieutenant Isaac Marshall of the
Revolutionary army, and a great-grandson of John
Marshall, one of the founders of Billerica, IMassachu-
setts, in which town he was born. In the year 1800
he married Priscilla Waterman, a daughter of Freeman
Waterman, who represented the town of Halifax in
the Cambridge Convention which ratified for Massa-
chusetts the Constitution of the United States.

Waterman had a sister who was distinguished for
her charm, and who married a Mr. Josselyn. Tra-
ditions of the Josselyn beauty lingered in Plymouth
until Emily Marshall's time. Mrs. Marshall was a
woman of much beauty, grace, and dignity.

Emily was born in the year 1807 on an estate at
Cambridge, which had been laid out a century before
by Thomas Brattle. Shortly after her birth her parents
moved into a house in Brattle Square, Boston, known
as the White House. It was built upon a terrace, with
steps running down to the square. A large, old-fash-
ioned garden in the rear was one of its attractions.
The house had already had two distinguished tenants,
Lieutenant-Governor Bolin and John Adams, the latter
having lived there when he was a young lawyer.

When Emily was fourteen years old her family once
more transplanted their household gods, going this time
into the house on Franklin Place, to which her beauty
brought such fame. It had already begun to manifest

92

EMILY MARSHALL

itself, and when she was but nine or ten years of age
she was frequently stopped on the street by strangers,
who asked whose child she was and involuntarily told
her of her budding loveliness. Yet so unconscious
did she ever appear of its possession, so wholly lacking
in personal vanity, that one of her sisters, gazing upon
her one night arrayed in a ball gown, and unable to
restrain her admiration, asked her if she realized how
beautiful she was. " Yes," she replied, " I know that
I am beautiful, but I do not understand why people act
so unwisely about it."

Her education was begun at Madame English's
school, where Russell Sturgis, afterwards a partner of
the Barings, said he first made her acquaintance. Like
every one else who ever saw her, he never forgot her.
More than forty years after her death, writing to thank
her daughter for the photograph of a portrait she had
sent him, he said, " I remember perfectly the portrait
and the time when it was painted. No painter could
ever give the brilliant expression which always lighted
her beautiful face ; the portrait is as good, therefore, as
any one could make it."

At Dr. Park's school on Mount Vernon Street, then
one of the best girls' schools in Boston, Margaret
Fuller was one of her school-mates, and confessed later
to a sister of Emily's that she would willingly have
changed her mental gifts for those of the beauty and
magnetism with which Emily was endowed.

From Dr. Park's Emily went to Madame Canda's
French school on Chestnut Street. Her musical edu-

93

FAMOUS AMERICAN BELLES

cation, which continued till the time of her marriage,
was conducted by Mr. Matthew, Mademoiselle Ber-
thien, and Mr. Ostinelli.

The long acquaintance existing for generations
among the families and individuals who made up the
Boston society of Emily Marshall's day, had instilled
into it a spirit of delightful simplicity. A traveller
from Great Britain who visited the United States early
in the century declared that all the people of the Bay
State called one another by their Christian names.

Dinner-parties were daylight affairs, beginning usually
not later than four o'clock. The dinner was served
in courses, beginning with soup, which was followed
frequently by a corn-meal pudding designed for the
avowed purpose of mitigating the appetite before the
introduction of the roast, which was carved upon the
table by the host, and served with Madeira, port, or
sherry.

One of Harrison Gray Otis's favorite after-dinner
stories, which he told in his own matchless way, was
of the first appearance of champagne in Boston. It
was introduced by the French consul, the unsophisti-
cated Bostonians partaking of the palatable beverage
with all the confidence which they were wont to bestow
upon cider, of which they thought it to be only a mild
form and of foreign extraction.

From eight until twelve were the hours for balls, at
which girls out for the first time wore white book-
muslin frocks, the belles of a season or more appearing
in tarleton, and dancing out a pair of slippers in an

94

EMILY MARSHALL

evening, slippers then being made with paper soles and
no heels. Light refreshments, such as nuts, raisins, or
oysters, were served at these evening affairs, and were
passed on trays, there being no elaborately set supper-
tables.

The five-o'clock tea, now so prevalent throughout
the country, made its way first into Boston and New
York, where it appeared in all its native English sim-
plicity.

From England also came actors bringing us our first
conception of Shakespearean characters. Cooper inter-
preting Hamlet to a Boston audience in 1807, the year
Emily Marshall was born, followed by Wallack, Ed-
mund Kean, Charles Matthews, the comedian, and
Phillips, with his infectious songs, the echoes of such
refrains as " Though love is warm awhile" floating
long after from drawing-room, nursery, and kitchen.

From the mother-country came our literature of the
early century, Scott, the new writer, being much read,
also Fanny Burney, Jane Austen, Maria Edgeworth,
and Shakespeare always.

Boston early achieved her reputation as a patroness
of letters. At her noted seat of learning not only the
youth of America, but a number of foreigners were
even then educated. Many an American boy who
claimed Harvard as his Alma Mater had journeyed to
her sacred precincts, when the cQuntry was in its teens,
all the way from the wilds of Kentucky on horseback.

Commencement day was a State holiday, when the
flower of Massachusetts womanhood united to do

95

FAMOUS AMERICAN BELLES

honor to the occasion. Many a man went thence on
his way with a face enshrined in his memory that he
had not found in his Virgil or his Homer, though
nothing more perfect graced those classic pages than
the face of Emily Marshall.

Though Willis's sonnet speaks of her eyes as hazel,
they have been described elsewhere as black. It is
probable that their color varied and intensified with
every thought or emotion. Her hair was of that
golden brown that flashes like bronze in the sunlight.
In height she was five feet and five inches. " Her
personal grace," said one of her admirers, a judge of
the Supreme Court of Pennsylvania, " was not acquired ;
a creature of such absolute natural perfection was
physically unable to make an ungraceful movement."

One who knew her in daily life writes : " The un-
speakable grace, the light of the eye, the expression of
the face, they come back to me as I think of her, but
I cannot convey them to others. It was the light in a
porcelain vase. You could draw the outlines of the
vase, but when the light was quenched it could be
known no more."

Enshrined in this form of almost unearthly loveli-
ness was a spirit of even rarer beauty, a character
that would have made even an ugly woman a force.
In every relationship she wielded an exquisite influence.
With a nature profoundly and silently religious were
combined a high sense of duty, a ready sympathy, an
absolute frankness and simplicity, a clear, practical

judgment, and a rapid insight into character.

96

EMILY MARSHALL

In conversation she drew out the best thoughts of
others intuitively and without vanity, reserving her own
brilliant intellect and ready wit for those who really
enjoyed it.

To her children, her self-abnegation, her gentleness,
her faultless judgment, the intense womanliness of her
nature, made her an ideal mother. She was as tenderly
loved by women as she was chivalrously worshipped by
man. Her twenty-nine years of life were all too short
for those who prized and lost her.

" Say that no envious thought could have been pos-
sible in her presence," is another woman's tribute to
her ; " that her sunny ways were fascinating to all alike ;
that she was as kind and attentive to the stupid and
tedious as if they were talented and of social promi-
nence." Of the effect everywhere produced by so ex-
quisite a personality there are countless evidences. It
was not restricted to any age, sex, or social class. Mr.
William Amory claims to have been in his youth the
most distinguished man in Boston, because he was not
in love with Emily Marshall.

A carpenter, whose shop was near the house in which
she lived after her marriage, failed to go home to his
dinner one day, and being asked the reason, replied that
he had seen Mrs. Otis go out earlier in the day and he
hoped that she might come back that way, adding that
he would rather see her any day than eat his dinner.

Franklin Place became the favorite walk with the
young men of Boston, many of whom never failed
once or twice daily to pass her house, with the hope of
7 97

FAMOUS AMERICAN BELLES

catching a glimpse of her at one of its windows.
Dr. Malcolm's church, of which she was a member,
also added many devotees to its congregation, William
Lloyd Garrison being among the number, who con-
fessed that he occasionally went there with the hope of
seeing the lovely face of Emily Marshall.

Nor was the repute of her beauty confined to her
native city. Wherever she went her unusual presence
was instantly felt ; she needed no society correspondent
to herald her, no princely admirer to create prestige for
her. Her claim to the world's homage was self-evi-
dent. She was a queen in her own right.

When she visited Philadelphia, so great was the
desire to see her that the young girls were let out of
school before the usual closing hour, that they might
have an opportunity to see her as she passed along the
street.

While she was at Saratoga, " gay, amusing, and con-
fusing," reached in those days from Boston by a tedious
stage-coach ride across the country, she never left the
hotel nor returned to it without attracting a throng of
people, eager even for a passing glimpse of her.

Nathaniel Parker Willis, who once had made a jour-
ney in the same coach in which Emily Marshall and her
mother were travelling, related afterwards that wherever
the coach stopped for dinner the news of the mar-
vellous beauty of one of the passengers was spread
abroad so rapidly that by the time Miss Marshall re-
turned to her seat in the coach a great crowd of people

would be assembled to see her.

98

EMILY MARSHALL

The following is Willis's very pretty acrostic on
Emily Marshall, which is included in his published
verses in the form of a sonnet :

" Elegance floats about thee like a dress.

Melting the airy motion of thy form
Into one swaying grace, and loveliness.

Like a rich tint that makes a picture warm.
Is lurking in the chestnut of thy tress.

Enriching it as moonlight after storm
Mingles dark shadows into gentleness.

A beauty that bewilders like a spell
Reigns in thine eyes' dear hazel, and thy brow.

So pure in veined transparency, doth tell
How spiritually beautiful art thou, —

A temple where angelic love might dwell.
Life in thy presence were a thing to keep.
Like a gay dreamer clinging to his sleep.'*

Percivars sonnet, published in the Literary Gazette
of Philadelphia, August, 1825, is perhaps the best
known of the poetical outpourings which her loveli-
ness inspired. It also is an acrostic.

'* Earth holds no fairer, lovelier than thou.
Maid of the laughing lip and frolic eye ;
Innocence sits upon thy open brow

Like a pure spirit in its native sky.
If ever beauty stole the heart" away.

Enchantress, it would fly to meet thy smile;
Moments would seem by thee a summer's day
And all around thee an Elysian isle.
99

FAMOUS AMERICAN BELLES

Roses are nothing to thy maiden blush

Sent o'er thy cheek's soft ivory ; and night
Has naught so dazzling in its world of light

As the dark rays that from thy lashes gush.
Love lurks among thy silken curls and lies.
Like a keen archer, in thy kindling eyes."

William Foster Otis, to whom she was married in
May, 1831, first saw her when she was fourteen years
old, on her way home from school. He loved her
from the moment his eyes fell upon her, and honored
her with the loyalty of a lifetime, though death
robbed him of her five years after their marriage.

Of the wedding there is extant a very good descrip-
tion in the form of a letter written by the bridegroom's
sister, under date of May 20, 1831.

" There were fifty guests at the wedding, an enormous crowd at
the visit [reception] which kept us until half-past ten from supper.
The bride looked very lovely, and was modest and unaffected. Her
dress was a white crepe lisse, with a rich vine of silver embroidery
at the top of the deep hem. The neck and sleeves were trimmed
with three rows of elegant blond lace very wide. Gloves embroid-
ered with silver, stockings ditto. Her dark-brown hair dressed plain
in front, high bows with a few orange-blossoms and a rich blond lace
scarf, tastefully arranged on her head, one end hanging front over her
left shoulder, the other hanging behind over her right. No orna-
ments of any kind, either on her neck or ears, not even a buckle.
I never saw her look so beautifril. Every one was remarking on her
beauty as they passed in and out of the room. Mrs. Marshall [the
bride's mother] looked extremely handsome. William [the bride-
groom] looked quite as handsome as the bride, and seemed highly
delighted. The bride and groom went to their house alone [70

100

EMILY MARSHALL

Beacon Street] about one o'clock [in the morning]. The groomsmen
serenaded them until the birds sang as loud as their instruments."

James Freeman Clarke, who was present at her wed-
ding, said afterwards that he " had often been perplexed
at the accounts he had read of the great personal
power of Mary Queen of Scots. He had never been
able to comprehend how the mere beauty of a woman
could so control the destinies of individuals and
nations, causing men gladly to accept death as the
price of a glance of the eyes or a touch of the hand."
After he had beheld Emily Marshall, however, he re-
alized the possibilities of such a power that is not
created once in a century.

She died in 1826, leaving two daughters and an
infant son.

** She had no autumn, not a storm

Darkened her youthful happiness ;
No winter came to bend that form.
Or silver o'er a silken tress.

" We miss her when we gaze on beauty's throng.
We miss her, aye, and we shall mourn her long.
Yet mourn her not, she had the best of life ;
A tender mother and a happy wife.' '

The above lines were written by her friend Fanny
Inglis, afterwards Madame Calderon de la Barca.

The chivalrous devotion which her daughters call
forth, after more than threescore years, from the men
who knew her is in itself sufficient to place her among
the classics of American womanhood.

lOX

OCTAVIA WALTON

(madame le vert)

INTO a world in which so many are born strangers,
some later to know it in part and others destined
to remain forever out of touch with life, and lonely-
spectators rather than a part of it, Octavia Walton came
as unto her own. Every atom of her being w^as in abso-
lute accord with the universe. No bristling antipathies
hedged in her genial personality nor raised barriers be-
tween herself and the beauties of life. She perceived
them always and with an enthusiasm that raised not
only her own existence, but that of many others, above
the level of the commonplace. She was a sort of
social sun, radiating light, warmth, and beauty upon
all the lives that touched hers, and it has been said that
no one ever came in contact with her, of no matter
what rank or condition in life, without experiencing a
sense of elation. She was one of nature's cosmopo-
lites, a woman to whom the whole world was home
and the people of all nations her friends. Far more to
this gift of temperament than to those of her personal
beauty or intellect, does she owe the eminence of her
position among the American women of her century.

She was born early enough in the history of the
Republic to partake in a measure of the glow of pa-

I02

OCTAVIA WALTON

triotic enthusiasm that had been the inspiration of its
founders. Though she was intensely American, she
grew up with no touch of bitterness for the mother-
country, cherishing the memory of Chatham's words
uttered in the House of Lords, " You cannot conquer
America," rather than his sovereign's misguided efforts
" to be a king."

Her grandfather, George Walton, who died two
years before her birth, was one of the signers of the
Declaration of Independence. He was a native of
Prince Edward County, Virginia, but removed, prior to
the Revolution, to Georgia, whence he was sent as a
delegate to the first Congress. He had married, in the
State of his adoption. Miss Camber, the daughter of an
English nobleman and the heiress to large tracts of
land that were grants from the crown. To this grand-
mother Octavia Walton was indebted for many graphic
stories of the thrilling days through which her coun-
try had passed in establishing itself as an independent
nation. She was in Philadelphia with her husband,
who was in attendance upon the Congress there, when
the news of the fall of Yorktown was received. The
town was quietly sleeping when the watchman calling
the hours announced, as usual, " Past midnight, and
all's well I" then, after an instant's pause and in a voice
that resounded through the streets, " And Cornwallis is
taken I" It sent a thrill through the town, and turned
that October night into day, for presently the streets
were swarming with people wild with joyous excite-
ment.

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FAMOUS AMERICAN BELLES

When Madame Le Vert related to Lamartine, with
whom she passed an evening during one of her visits to
Paris, in speaking of the Declaration of Independence,
that her grandfather's name was thereon inscribed,
and that he had given his blood and his fortune to the
cause of America's freedom, the Frenchman arose and
bowed to her profoundly. *' Madame," he said, " in his
name you have a noble heritage. It is the true patent
of nobility, and you rightly cherish your descent from
such a brave and heroic patriot with honest pride."

The State of Georgia gave George Walton high
honors, making him governor and, later, judge of the
Supreme Court, and erecting a monument to com-
memorate his sterling qualities in one of the princi-
pal thoroughfares of the city of Augusta. His son
and namesake married the accomphshed and beau-
tiful Miss Sally Walker, the daughter of a distin-
guished jurist of Georgia. Of the two children of
their marriage, — a son and a daughter, — the latter was
born at Bellevue, near Augusta, in the year 1810. She
was named by her mother after the Roman Octavia, the
beloved and noble sister of Augustus and the deserted
wife of Marc Anthony, and was taught to revere the
beauty of a character that possessed, as Pope Pius IX.
said, when Madame Le Vert told him for whom she
was named, " every virtue and grace that should adorn
a woman."

Her early education was directed entirely by her

mother and grandmother. An old Scotch tutor later

assumed charge of the studies of Octavia and her

104

Octavia Walton
(Madame Le Vert)

OCTAVIA WALTON

brother, instructing them together in the sciences and
languages. The facihty with which Octavia mas-
tered the latter was an evidence of the remarkable elas-
ticity and adaptability of her nature. She acquired
readily not only the language, but all the gestures and
mannerisms of a foreign people. To her father this
branch of her education was a matter of much interest.
In the year 1821, when she was eleven years old, he
became Secretary of State for Florida under Andrew
Jackson, who was governor of the Territory. There
often came to him in connection with the affairs of his
office, letters and despatches in French and Spanish, of
both of which languages she had so accurate a knowl-
edge that he could entirely rely upon her translations
of them. During a court ball at which she was
present while in England, some years after her marriage,
she dehghted the ambassadors from France, Spain, and
Italy by talking with each in his own tongue. She
pleased the Holy Father no less upon the occasion of
her audience with him, when, after he had spoken with
her in both French and Spanish, thinking it might be
less of an effort for him, she asked him to speak in his
own tongue. During her residence in Florida, where
her father succeeded General Jackson in the governor-
ship, she also acquired a goodly store of Indian legends,
which became later the delight of many an audience.
She related on shipboard one night the story of Ala-
bama having received the name from a tribe of Indians
who were driven by a fierce northern foe to the forests
of the southeast, and, coming upon a beautiful river,

105

FAMOUS AMERICAN BELLES

the chief struck his tent-pole, exclaiming " Alabama !
Alabama !" meaning, " Here we rest." She was greeted,
upon going on deck the following day, with an out-
spread buffalo-robe, which a Chicagoan was taking to
England as a gift for the Queen, and requested to make
it her " Alabama" during the remainder of the voyage. ;

When her father selected a permanent seat of gov-
ernment for Florida, he permitted her to give it a name,
and she called it Tallahassee, — the Indian word for
" beautiful land," — as a courtesy to the Seminole chief
who had first pitched his tent on the spot. She had
much sympathy and affection for the Indians, often
pleading their cause against some act of aggression or
injustice, and they had a tender reverence for her, call-
ing her frequently " the white dove of peace."

One of the memorable events of her young life was
the visit of Lafayette to America. It enters into the
record of many lives that covered that period, some of
which were far spent and some so tenderly youthful
that the little marquis saluted them only by proxy,
delegating somebody else " to kiss the babies" while he
shook countless outstretched hands, for he was as com-
plaisant as he was artistic. He wrote to the widow of
his old friend, General George Walton, expressing a
wish to see her during his stay in Mobile. Her health
was not sufficiently robust, however, to admit of her
undertaking a journey with the few comforts that were
then possible. She sent her daughter-in-law and her
granddaughter to represent her, intrusting to Octavia a

miniature of her husband, the better to recall his fea-

xo6

OCTAVIA WALTON

tures to Lafayette's memory and to enable him to
realize how strong was the resemblance the little girl
bore to her illustrious grandfather. She talked to him
in French, so that the interview was to Lafayette a
time of delightful relaxation, and it was with genuine
reluctance that he saw it draw to a close. To Octavia
it was the first in a long series of interesting memories
associated with Mobile, whither her family removed
from Florida in the year 1835. In the latter State,
however, she spent the happy period of her young
womanhood ; hence Lady Emmeline Stuart Wortley, in
some lines addressed to her at a later period, calls her
" Sweet Rose of Florida."

Pensacola was the naval station of the gulf coast,
and the constant coming and going of men-of-war, with
the attendant festivities of balls of welcome and fare-
well banquets, were a distinctive feature in the social
life of that portion of the Territory.

Octavia Walton, the governor's daughter, cultivated
intellectually to a degree that made her the appreciative
listener and intelligent talker among men of science and
of letters, and with a personal beauty that made her
the admiration of every one, occupied from her earliest
girlhood a position of unusual prominence.

Long runs with her brother in the invigorating air
of the coast had given to her supple figure, with its
graceful curves, that erect carriage which she always re-
tained. Her head was well poised, and her soft brown
hair parted simply above a broad brow of unusual

whiteness and transparency. In her blue eyes there

107

FAMOUS AMERICAN BELLES

lurked a suggestion of the cool and quiet depth of a
forest, while her mouth, that feature which, says OUver
Wendell Holmes, we all make for ourselves, denoted
the sweetness of her character. These were the visible
forms of the loveliness of the young Octavia Walton,
whom Frederika Bremer, the Swedish novelist, called
" the magnolia flower of the South."

In 1835, the year her family moved to Mobile,
accompanied by her mother and brother, she made a
tour of the United States, visiting during the summer
the famous resort of the North, Saratoga Springs, and
going to Washington after the assembling of Congress
in December. She attained a fame during that year
that made her the inspiration of poets noted for the
beauty of their lyric verse, and the subject of several
analytical writings. She formed during the same pe-
riod the friendship of two of the most eminent men
of that time, Washington Irving and Henry Clay. She
met Irving in travelling, and discovered his identity in a
singular way. It was three years after his return from
Spain, where he had represented his country with so
much dignity and ability that his welcome home had
been much in the nature of an ovation. The stage-
coach, in which so many pleasant acquaintances were
made, was yet the usual means of transportation, though
the duration of journeys had been greatly lessened by
the successful introduction of the steamboat, in which
enterprise Fulton already had competitors, one young
Vanderbilt running a rival Hne on the Sound between
New York and Providence. Irving, who had been on

108

OCTAVIA WALTON

the dock when Fulton made the first experiment with
his steamer, used to relate with exquisite humor how
the breathless silence of the crowd of curious specta-
tors who watched her puff off into the stream was
broken by the voice of an incredulous man saying,
" She may go well enough for a time, but give me a
good sloop." Being singularly shy, he usually talked
but little among strangers. Divining in the young girl,
who sat opposite him in the stage-coach for several
days during the summer of 1835, those same qualities
— " the sound and pure intellect and the heart full of
affection" — that so endeared her to Miss Bremer, he
dropped frequently into the current of bright talk she
kept up with her mother and brother. They specu-
lated frequently upon his identity, for his appearance
was unusual, his manner courtly, and his language that
of a most cultivated man. While she was talking
with her brother in Spanish one day, he joined in their
conversation and related some incident in connection
with a bull-fight he had seen when in Spain. Octavia
had already heard the identical story from another
source, and, connecting the two narrations, she ex-
claimed, quickly, and quite unconsciously betraying the
fact that his identity had been a matter of curiosity to
her, " I know who you are ! You are Washington Ir-
ving. Mr. Slidell, who related that story to me, told me
that Washington Irving was standing beside him when
it happened." Thus began a friendship that had an ex-
tensive influence upon her life. Realizing how keen

were her powers of observation, and how unusual her

109

FAMOUS AMERICAN BELLES

command of language, he advised her to keep a jour-
nal, which was her first effort at writing, at which she
attained later a leading position among women of let-
ters at the South. He corresponded with her till the
end of his life, and aided her with many suggestions
gathered from his own experience in a long literary-
career. She in return shed many a ray of brightness
over an existence that, with all its fame and success, was
not without its lonely hours. The last time they met
he reluctantly watched her departure from Sunnyside.
" I feel, my child," he said, " that you are taking all
the sunshine away with you."

Henry Clay looked upon her with the same tender
pride that characterized Irving's attitude towards her.
The beauty of her feet being at one time a subject of
comment in his presence, he said that, while he was not
prepared to pass judgment upon them, he was proud to
be able to bear testimony to a beauty of tongue that he
considered without parallel. Like Irving's, his friend-
ship for her knew no change during the remainder of
his lifetime. When the corner-stone of the monument
erected to his memory in New Orleans was laid, she
delivered an address that was well worthy of the elo-
quence of the man it eulogized.

In 1 836 Octavia Walton was married, in the city of
Mobile, to Dr. Henry S. Le Vert, a son of Dr. Claud
Le Vert, who, coming to America as surgeon of the
fleet under Rochambeau, had remained there after the
termination of hostilities, settling in Virginia, and mar-
rying a niece of Admiral Vernon. As Madame Le

no

OCTAVIA WALTON

Vert, Octavia Walton attained that same social sover-
eignty that was achieved a few years later by Mrs.
Rush, of Philadelphia, and at a still more recent period
by Mrs. Astor, of New York. The same sort of In-
stinctive tribute was everywhere accorded each of these
women, raising her to an eminence In which she was
sustained by the unusual order of the gifts with which
she v/as endowed. In Mobile, so absolute was the
leadership of Madame Le Vert that she was frequently
designated simply as " Madame," it being everywhere
understood that the title without the accompaniment
of any name applied only to her.

Her home on Government Street was the most noted
of the city. There she entertained at various times
not only the most distinguished of the people of her
own country, but many eminent foreigners, Kossuth,
among others, and Frederika Bremer. Lady Emmeline
Stuart Wortley, the daughter of the Duke of Rutland,
having been her guest for several weeks, gave her later
that introduction that made possible the establishment
of her social fame In England.

Joseph Jefferson, growing up In the profession in
which he now stands In the foremost rank, and In
whom she early recognized the divine spark of genius,
had frequent proofs of the kindliness of her hospitality.

Her library was the feature of her home In which
she always evinced the most Interest. She never aban-
doned those habits of study which kept her in touch
with the progressive minds of the world. Beauty alone

is not sufficient to give a woman the place Madame

III

FAMOUS AMERICAN BELLES

Le Vert filled. It attracts, but there must be behind it
the sustaining force of an intelligence radiating sym-
pathy, of a mentality developed and adorned wi.h those
graces that enable it to enter into and illuminate the
lives that approach it. She continued to read in the
foreign languages she had mastered in her early girl-
hood, painstakingly teaching them to her children,
whom, in their infancy, she often sung to sleep with
the love ditties of Italy. To her husband she was a
continual source of revelation and pride. Precise,
practical, profoundly interested in his profession, he felt
little interest in the purely fashionable element of the life
that revolved about her. In her relationship to it, how-
ever, her power to attract and hold such a diversity of
tastes and temperaments he found an interesting study.
At her levees and receptions it was his delight to take
up his position where he could watch her, and, if possi-
ble, where he could occasionally catch the sparkle of
her words.

To a nature keenly alive to every impression, the loss
of her only brother, to whom she was attached by ties
of an extraordinary sympathy, brought a grief that for
a long time overshadowed her happy spirit. A few
years after this loss, — in June, 1 853, — accompanied by
her father and the elder of her daughters, she made her
first visit to the Old World, whose treasures and re-
sources her classical education had so ably fitted her to
enjoy. Her journal and letters written during this
period and a subsequent trip ring with the enthusiasm

of a girl. They formed the basis of her first pub-

112

OCTAVIA WALTON

lished work, which met with much success, for in those
days the theme was fresher, and she handled it with a
a sprightliness that gave individuahty and interest to
every page. Very graphically she relates how the first
ardor with which she embarked upon the new and
delightful experience of a transatlantic voyage was
quenched by that unromantic malady, sea-sickness.
With the memory of the torture fresh upon her, she
wrote that Solomon, when he ejaculated, " O that
mine enemy would write a book !" probably knew
nothing of the agonies of sea-sickness, or he would
rather have invoked that malady upon him.

The London season was at its height when she
arrived there. Well introduced, she created so favor-
able an impression upon a society where the success of an
American depends largely if not entirely upon personal
merit as evinced by his or her good breeding, intelli-
gence, and powers to entertain, that she experienced all
the delights of a hospitality which to the uninitiated is
cold and exclusive. She was presented to the Queen at
a court ball, to which she received the unusual honor of
an invitation without a previous presentation to Her
Majesty. With genuine regret she saw the days al-
lotted to her stay in England draw to a close. Every-
where, however, she found and made friends, many
strangers recognizing in her, in all its strength and
purity, that sympathy which makes the world akin, and
involuntarily opening their hearts to her. She was in-
tensely interested in every one and everything, so that
her life never contracted. Her early memories were
8 113

FAMOUS AMERICAN BELLES

associated with the Spanish, and she never outgrew her
appreciation for the grace of their civiUzation. Her
abiUty to speak the language added much to the pleas-
ure and profit of her visit to Spain, and her journal re-
counting her stage-coach experiences contains frequent
allusions to the unfailing courtesy of the people of that
country. In Italy her knowledge of the language of
the land again made her the spokesman of her little
party, and with beneficial results. In Florence she had
the pleasure of meeting the Brownings, and the interest
they inspired in her seems to have been mutual. Mrs.
Browning, whose health did not permit her to go out
in the night air, broke the rule it had entailed upon her
and went to a party given in honor of Madame Le Vert
on the eve of her departure, that she might once more
have the pleasure of seeing and talking with her.
During one of her visits to Rome she had one of those
peculiar experiences that evinced the friendliness she
everywhere inspired. She had gone with her daughter
to St. Peter's to attend the ceremony known as the
Apostle's banquet. At the termination of the exercises
there began an awful struggle for liberty in the packed
isles of the great church. Madame Le Vert was well-
nigh overpowered, when suddenly she felt herself lifted
from her feet, raised high in the air, and safely en-
sconced on a window-ledge, while a reassuring voice
whispered, in French, " There, little woman, don't be
afraid ; you'll be safe there." Her rescuer was a pow-
erful Russian woman, who, when she had placed Miss
Le Vert beside her mother, said, simply, " Do not forget

114

OCTAVIA WALTON

me when you think of the Apostle's banquet," and
moved away with the surging crowd.

In all her journeys, both in her own country and in
Europe, she was accompanied by her colored maid
Betsey. " North, South, East, and West," wrote one
of her friends, " goes Betsey with her mistress through
bristling ranks of abolitionists, up the Rhine, over the
Alps, everywhere goes Betsey."

" If you would see the ideal relationship between a
lady and her female slave," said Frederika Bremer, " you
should see Octavia Le Vert and her clever, handsome,
mulatto attendant^ Betsey. Betsey seems really not to
live for anything else than for her mistress Octavia."

At the Austrian border they were put through a series
of questions, all of their responses "being recorded,"
said Madame Le Vert, " for the benefit of posterity."
Betsey was put down as a Moor, much to her dismay,
and she besought her mistress to assure them that she
" had nothing but pure American blood in her veins,
and was a slave from the South."

During her second visit to Europe, in 1 855, Madame
Le Vert spent the summer in Paris, the governor of
Alabama having named her Commissioner from that
State to the Paris Exposition of that year. His gal-
lantry was a frequent subject of comment and apprecia-
tion, for she was the only woman among the commis-
sioners. The position, however, seems to have been
purely honorary, for she lamented that when asked to
point out the products of Alabama in her department,
she could only indicate her daughter. " If there had

115

FAMOUS AMERICAN BELLES

been even only a few cotton-seed," she said, " it would
at least have served to swear by."

She witnessed the enthusiastic reception tendered by
the French nation to the Queen of England, was pres-
ent at the ball given by the Emperor in her honor, and
was at the opera the night the royal party visited it,
when the whole audience rose en masse at the first note
of England's national anthem, sung by Roger, Alboni,
and Cruvelli. She heard with a thrill of enthusiasm
the " Vive la Reine Victoria" that burst from a thou-
sand lips, and saw the Emperor lead the gracious queen
three times to the front of the box to acknowledge the
tumultuous tribute. In her own box sat, on that mem-
orable night, an ex-President of the great repubHc across
the water, — Millard Fillmore.

A visit made during her stay in Ferrara, Italy, to the
home of the poet Ariosto so impressed Madame Le Vert
that it was productive of a notable result after her
return to America. His house had been purchased by
the government, and everything in it was preserved in
the order in which he had left it at the time of his
death. Realizing that it was regarded as a shrine, and
devoutly visited by those who would honor the mem-
ory of the immortal poet, her thoughts reverted to the
home of the great American general, Mount Vernon,
then falling into decay, whereas it might be similarly
preserved by the patriotism of the people. She took
up the question earnestly after her return to America,
and did for the cause at the South as much as Mrs.
Harrison Gray Otis did for it at the North. In one day

ii6

OCTAVIA WALTON

she received at her home in Mobile, in small contribu-
tions, upward of a thousand dollars.

Many of Madame Le Vert's most charming letters
were written to her mother. After a long day of travel
or sight-seeing she frequently sat up far into the night
that she might not neglect the pleasant duty of writing
these letters.

Her parents' home in Mobile, of which city her
father was for a time mayor, was near her own, and she
continued to be much with them until their lives closed,
which they did in close succession, shortly before the
outbreak of the war. Her husband's death occurred
during the last year of that melancholy period which
shook the homes of the South to their foundation.
She went North and remained for over a year after the
close of the war, accompanied by her two daughters.
She returned to the South for a time, but eventually
removed to New York, disposing of her home and
many of her possessions, the losses she had sustained
and the altered conditions of her life rendering Mobile
no longer to her a place of happy existence.

Having been so long a leader, she continued to exer-
cise various queenly prerogatives, which to many people
at the North seemed eccentric. She had not the pres-
tige there that would have made them possible, though
she was never without her coterie of admirers.

Her later years were not affluent, and she was obliged
to put her talents to bread-winning purposes. She died
in the city in which she had been born, Augusta,
Georgia, on the 13th of March, 1877.

117

FANNY TAYLOR

(mRS. THOMAS HARDING ELLIs)

THE loveliness of Virginia women has been a
theme of song and verse. Among the Rich-
mond belles of sixty years ago none were more
justly celebrated than that trio known as the Rich-
mond Graces, Sally Chevalier, Fanny Taylor, and Sally
Watson. Close companions from early childhood,
their unusual beauty as they grew to womanhood
brought them fame individually and collectively. Sally
Chevalier became the wife of Abram Warwick, Sally
Watson, of Alexander Rives, and Fanny Taylor, of
whom this sketch is designed to treat at greater length,
was twice married. She was educated at the excellent
school of Miss Jane Mackenzie, in Richmond, at a time
when a young lady's education embraced a rather su-
perficial dip into the languages, a good deal of poetry,
some history, a neat Italian handwriting, and a care of
their peach-blossom complexions and slender hands.
Frivolous as it sounds compared with the curriculum
of girls' schools in good standing at this end of the
century, the history of the South furnishes many evi-
dences of the profundity as well as the brilliancy of its
women.

ii8

Fanny Tajior

(Mrs. Thomas Harding Ellis)

From portrait by Thomas Sully

FANNY TAYLOR

With her friends, Sally Chevalier and Sally Watson,
Fanny Taylor was a pupil in the dancing academies of
Mr. Xaupi and Mr. Boisseau. They excelled in the
grace and beauty of their dancing, and at the Assembly
balls it was their custom to occupy places in the same
cotillon. They enjoyed the delicate celebrity of having
pieces of dancing-music named after them, and when
" Sally Chevalier," " Fanny Taylor," or " Sally Wat-
son," was called for, Judah, Ruffin, and Lomax, those
dusky magnates of the ball-room, brought forth the
melody with an air that was their own peculiar tribute
to the fair young queens.

About the time she reached maturity, Fanny Taylor
removed with her mother from Richmond to " Glen-
arron," the superb James River estate of her brother-
in-law, Mr. William Gait. Shortly afterwards she re-
turned to Richmond, where she spent a winter as the
guest of her friends, Mr. and Mrs. Warwick. She be-
came noted as the most beautiful woman in the Old
Dominion. In a word, she was the belle of Richmond,
which boasted the most delightful society in the South,
and she would not have exchanged places with a prin-
cess of the royal house of England.

Richmond of those days was too small for social
divisions and subdivisions. There was but one set, and
every one who went into society at all belonged to it.
It was well established and conservative. Its traditions
were ancient, and it tolerated no innovations. It had
its calling hours from twelve till four, when its drawing-
rooms were crowded with young men from the neigh-

119

FAMOUS AMERICAN BELLES

boring plantations, professional men, and legislators, on
whose ears the tones of the Capitol bell announcing
the opening of the session were wont to fall in vain.
There were dancing-parties for young people, beginning
at seven or eight in the evening, and dinner-parties for
distinguished guests at four o'clock in the afternoon.

The graceful art of carving formed an indispensable
part of a gentleman's education, and a host gave tan-
gible proof of his hospitality when from his end of the
table he served his guests with his own hand, selecting
the choice parts of a joint or fowl for the guest of
honor.

The ladies retired at the conclusion of dinner, leaving
the gentlemen in possession of the table, being a cus-
tom of their English forefathers which their colonial
antecedents had adhered to probably in the log-cabin
days when there was a state occasion.

There were no teas and no debuts. Girls never
came out, because, as Thomas Nelson Page has said,
" they had never been in." As soon as they were old
enough to be out of the nursery they drifted naturally
into the drawing-room, and there grew up in that social
sphere which many of them were destined later to sway
as queens.

Within a year after her reign in Richmond society
Fanny Taylor became the wife of Archibald Morgan
Harrison, of Fluvanna County, a most distinguished
agriculturist, at a time when it was worth being a Vir-
ginia farmer and a country gentleman. They lived at

" Carysbrook," Mr. Harrison's estate on the Rivanna

1 20

FANNY TAYLOR

River, in the royal style easily possible to the South in
her days of prosperity. She was a great-granddaughter
of Benjamin Harrison, a signer of the Declaration of
Independence, and her husband was a great-grandson of
Benjamin Harrison, the father of Benjamin the signer.
Their life of pastoral beauty closed with Mr. Harrison's
death. His widow was at the height of her love-
liness, and when she went once more into the world
she evoked the most unstinted and genuine admiration.
Mrs. Nellie Custis Lewis, who was expending on her
motherless grandchildren all the solicitude that her
grandmother, Martha Washington, had lavished upon
her when she was similarly bereaved, expressed the
desire that her son-in-law should woo Mrs. Harrison.
So truly did she admire the qualities of her character,
as well as her great personal beauty, that she was the
only woman she had ever seen, she said, whom she
w^ould welcome as her daughter's successor, and wil-
lingly see placed over her grandchildren. She never
had an opportunity to extend that magnanimous, how-
ever cordial, greeting, for the youthful Mrs. Harrison,
after six years of widowhood, bestowed her hand upon
Colonel Thomas Harding EUis, of Richmond. He
had been secretary of the American legation at Mexico,
and was subsequently for nearly fourteen years presi-
dent of the James River and Kanawha Canal Company,
his administration covering the^period of the war, when
the canal was the most important line of improvement
in the State for supplying with agricultural produce the
city of Richmond and the army of Northern Virginia.

121

FAMOUS AMERICAN BELLES

They visited Washington shortly after their mar-
riage, where they were guests of Mr. John Y. Mason.
Mr. Mason presented them to President and Mrs. Polk,
whose courtesies to them added much to the pleasure
of the Washington chapter of their honeymoon days.

Mrs. Ellis's mother had stood at the bedside of her
uncle William Henry Harrison when, in the presence
of his cabinet, he uttered those memorable last words,
" I desire the principles of the Constitution to be main-
tained."

The union of Colonel and Mrs. Ellis terminated with
the death of Mrs. Ellis in July, 1897, followed, in a
few months, by that of her husband. For nearly fifty
years had they traversed life's highlands and lowlands
together, closest companions, tenderest of lovers, she
possessing all the strength not incompatible with the
finest and gentlest traits of female character, and retain-
ing to the last all the delicacy of her wonderful beauty,
and he the embodiment of chivalry, the highest type
of a Virginia gentleman of the old regime.

122

Sally Chevalier

(Mrs. Abram Warwick)

Bj' Thomas Sully

JESSIE BENTON

(mrs. JOHN c. Fremont)

IN the year 1868 the city of St. Louis erected a
monument to the memory of one of her most dis-
tinguished citizens, Thomas Hart Benton. Of the
forty thousand people who thronged the park on that
May afternoon set aside for its unveiHng, but one was
of the great man's blood, the daughter most closely
associated with the accomplishment of his loftiest con-
ception, that dream of Westem empire for his country.
Accompanied by her husband. General John C. Fre-
mont, she had accepted the invitation to unveil the
statue. As she pulled the cord that loosened its wrap-
pings, and the school children of the city threw their
offerings of roses at the feet of him who had befriended
their fathers, the huzzas of the vast multitude filled the
fragrant air. The outgoing train to San Francisco
halted to salute with flags and whistles as the bronze
hand, pointing to the west, came into view, and the
words graven on the pedestal: "There is the East.
There lies the road to India." To General Fremont,
quietly and reverently occupying a place of honor on
the platform, it was one of those supreme moments

when the landmarks of memory, those events that give

123

FAMOUS AMERICAN BELLES

color to our lives, stand forth to the exclusion even of
that which is at the moment passing before the eye.
Neither the vivas of the people nor the flowers of their
children thrilled him as did the salute of that out-
bound train, that thing of strength and power and
speed, bearing its message of progress and civilization.

He knew every mile of its route. He, the path-
finder, by his indomitable energy had traversed the vir-
gin snows of its mountain ways, had penetrated the mys-
teries of its wild valleys, and by his valor had given to
his country its golden terminus. And there, between
the efBgy of the one in the radiance of the spring
sunshine and the living man, stood the woman
still radiant with that high type of beauty that ema-
nates from the soul, the link, she has said of herself,
between the conception and the execution of the great
scheme of Western aggrandizement. Cradled among
great ideas, she had grown up to be an inspiration to
the man wath the prowess and daring necessary to give
them life and form. Some men, such as Abraham
Lincoln, have been great in spite of their wives, while
to others, as to Fremont, through their wives have come
not only the opportunity for greatness, but with them
that identity of purpose that in itself is a fortification
against all adverse circumstances.

The story of Jessie Benton Fremont's life is closely
allied with that of the acquisition and development of
the vast territory west of St. Louis, which even in her
young womanhood was the outpost of habitation. Be-
yond its confines stretched that wonderland of her

124

JESSIE BENTON

childhood, whence came the trappers and hunters with
their wild tales of adventure, and whither she was des-
tined to follow one day the princely pied piper of her
girlhood. The seed of the thought which bore its first
fruit when Fremont raised our flag on Wind River
Mountain, thirteen thousand feet above the Gulf of
Mexico, was sown in the mind of her father when, in
1812, he followed Andrew Jackson from Nashville to
New Orleans to defend the Mississippi. In the stirring
life on its broad bosom, together with a first realization
of the extent of our domain, he recognized the possi-
bilities of our future expansion and greatness. He
had already been admitted to the bar of Tennessee and
was a member of the Legislature of that State. With
the idea, however, that the government of the United
States should extend its protecting arm over the great
western wilderness, in which it evinced no interest and
whence it anticipated no benefit, he moved, in his thir-
tieth year, to its border-land.

Its people recognized his friendly attitude, and when
Missouri rose to the dignity of a representation on the
floor of the United States Senate, Benton was the first
man to whom she delegated that honor. There, for
over thirty years, with a limited following, he fought
aggressively foot by foot for the development of the
West. He often wearied his hearers, who had but little
sympathy with projects that to the remote Eastern mind
seemed preposterous. It was not infrequently a signal,
when Benton mounted his hobby, for his fellow-Sena-
tors to take up their letter-writing and for the galleries

125

FAMOUS AMERICAN BELLES

to be deserted. It made little difference to them if
England's hand were outstretched and her fingers daily
tightening their clutch upon our northwestern territory.
The mouth of the Columbia River was about of as
much consequence to the welfare of the United States,
in the estimation of the people on the Atlantic sea-
board, as are the canals on the planet Mars.

Commercial relations with Asia and ports on the
Pacific, however Utopian they may have seemed to
others with less of a grasp on the world's history than
his scholarly mind possessed, were to Benton vital ques-
tions, for which he fought with that vigor of utterance
that provoked John Randolph into saying that his
family motto, " Factus non verbis," should be " Factus
et verbis."

He was a powerful man, with a forcible way of
speaking, which he retained to the end of his life.
When he was stumping his State in the summer of
1856, being already in his seventieth year, he was cau-
tiously viewed one morning through the crack of an
open door by two anti-Bentonites. He was standing
at the moment and speaking in a vigorous way that ap-
palled his surreptitious visitors. " Good God," ejaculated
one, " we shall have to fight him these twenty years I"

He was a striking figure, with heavy black hair and
side whiskers, and during all the years that he was in
the Senate, like some of his illustrious successors, he
never changed the style of his dress. His vehemence
was expended in public. In his family life he was as
gentle as he was devoted.

126

JESSIE BENTON

Jessie, the second of his four daughters, and the sub-
ject of this sketch, was bom at the home of her mater-
nal grandfather. Colonel James McDowell, near Lex-
ington, Virginia. She grew up partly in the picturesque
atmosphere of St. Louis, then almost wholly a French
settlement, and partly in Washington, where Benton's
home was considered one of the most interesting in the
city, owing to the cultivated wife and daughters who
gave it character and individuality. Intermingled with
her school-days she had her little day of belleship,
during which the two most notable events were a
dinner at the White House, given by President Van
Buren for his young son, and the wedding of Baron
Bodisco, the Russian minister, at which she appeared as
first bridesmaid. The bride. Miss Williams, was one
of her school-mates, and a girl of sixteen, while the
bridegroom was over sixty. The details of the cere-
mony, however, were all harmoniously arranged by
him, and included eight bridesmaids between the ages
of thirteen and sixteen, and eight groomsmen of his
own period of life. With one of the most distin-
tinguished, James Buchanan, — then in the United States
Senate, and but recently returned from the Russian mis-
sion,— walked Jessie Benton, fourteen years of age, and
in her first long dress. Judged by his last will, this
Russian January seems to have been an unselfish hus-
band, for he therein expressed the wish that his still
young wife should marry again and be as happy herself
as she had made him.

The Van Buren dinner was a more or less memor-

127

FAMOUS AMERICAN BELLES

able event, though the White House was famlUar
ground to Jessie Benton. During Jackson's adminis-
tration she used frequently to go there with her father,
for the old soldier-President was notably a lover of chil-
dren. He liked to run his long fingers through her
soft curls, while he talked with his old friend Benton,
unwittingly giving the curls many a twist as he warmed
to his subject, all of which the little girl bore heroically,
finding ample recompense in her father's praise, which
was sure to follow the ordeal.

She went to school both in St. Louis and Washing-
ton, in the former city principally for the sake of learn-
ing French by association with children to whom it
was the mother-tongue. She spent two years at Miss
♦English's boarding-school, in Georgetown, where she
was not regarded as a diligent student. Many hours
stolen from the class-rooms were not, perhaps, alto-
gether unprofitably spent up a mulberry-tree listening
to the fascinating accounts of a midshipman's life, as
told by one of his cousins, and hanging hungrily upon
every word, as if it in a measure foretold her own event-
ful career.

At home her mental training was continuous, and
without conscious, or at least arduous, effort on her part.
Each of Benton's daughters had her place at his library
table, and there, stimulated by his studious habits, she
acquired readily her portion of that vast fund of knowl-
edge which he had gleaned first from his father's library
of unusual excellence and later from his contact with

men and measures of his day.

128

JESSIE BENTON

Of the measures there were many afoot when Ben-
ton's daughters were young, whose stupendous propor-
tions we are scarcely able to gauge, knowing them only
in the perfection of their full realization. Benton was
the sympathetic friend of all progress, and beneath the
steady glow of his astral lamp or the soft flicker of
their mother's candles, in the nights before the advent
of gas, his daughters, sewing each her fine seam,
listened to the unfolding of the minds of the men who
have developed America. They learned also those
lessons of inexhaustible patience that must go hand
in hand with every great undertaking and of the fre-
quent subordination of the individual to the things his
own mind has conceived.

Thither came Morse with that sublime faith in his
conception of telegraphy that made him insensible or
at least indifferent to the ridicule of Congress, where a
member suggested, when he at length obtained his
twenty-five thousand dollars for an experimental line to
Baltimore, that a second appropriation should be made
for an experimental line to the moon.

An overland emigrant route, the surveys for a rail-
road to the Pacific, and the Panama Railroad, Stevens
coming to them directly from Central America and
going later to the Isthmus, were some of the vast
projects with whose details they were early familiarized.
Later, when Jessie Benton, as Mrs. Fremont, crossed
the Isthmus herself and was detained there by the fever,
she saw Stevens every day, he coming, as he said, " to
take his chill with her." He died in Panama, as he

9 129

FAMOUS AMERICAN BELLES

predicted that he would, one of the heroes in the van-
guard of progress.

Into Benton's home quite naturally there drifted, in
the year 1840, a young lieutenant of the corps of topo-
graphical engineers, fresh from the survey of the upper
Mississippi. The son of a French father and a Vir-
ginia mother, John C. Fremont was born in South
Carolina, in the year 1813. He was graduated, when
he was seventeen years old, from Charleston College,
where he remained to study civil engineering and teach
mathematics. He was so unusually talented that
Poinsett, the Secretary of War, recommended his ser-
vices to Nicollet when the latter was about to under-
take the survey of the Upper Mississippi. The two
years in the field were followed by two years spent in
Washington in preparing the scientific result of the
expedition, during which period Benton became inter-
ested more perhaps in the work than in the individ-
uality of the young officer, whose genius was later to
open to us the western gates of our republic.

Accompanying Benton's eldest daughter to a concert
at Miss English's school, Fremont for the first time
met Jessie Benton. She produced on his mind at once
" the effect that a rose of rare color or a beautifial pic-
ture would have done." She was but sixteen years old
at the time, in the first bloom of girlish beauty, and
her bright mind exhilarated by the pleasure of seeing
her sister, poured itself forth in language as sparkling
as it was natural. " Her beauty," he wrote later, in
describing that first impression of her, " had come far

130

JESSIE BENTON

enough down from English ancestry to be now in her
that American kind which is made up largely of mind
expressed in the face, but it still showed its Saxon
descent. At that time of awakening mind, the quali-
ties that made hers could only be seen in flitting
shadows across the face or in the expression of incip-
ient thought or unused and untried feeling."

Coming home for the Easter holidays, she found that
the young lieutenant had become identified with her
father's " Oregon work." He was an almost daily vis-
itor at her home, and in his constant meetings with
her in its unreserved atmosphere he found confirmation
of the first impression he had formed of her. " There
are features," he wrote later, " that convey to us a soul
so white that they impress with instant pleasure, and
of this kind were hers. Her qualities were all womanly,
and education had curiously preserved the down of a
modesty which was innate. There had been no ex-
perience of life to brush away the bloom."

Before the holidays were over this impression of her
had penetrated Fremont's entire being, and he loved
her no less profoundly than he admired her, rendering
her an absolute devotion that knew no subsequent dim-
inution. " Insensibly and imperceptibly," he said,
" there came a glow into my heart which changed the
current and color of daily life, and gave a beauty to
common things."

That April day in 1841, when, a month after it had
witnessed his inauguration, a mourning nation assem-
bled to pay its last tribute to William Henry Harrison, a

131

FAMOUS AMERICAN BELLES

gray and gloomy day without, Fremont has recorded as
the " red letter day" of his life. The government had
leased quarters near the Capitol for the use of Nicollet,
where the work on the map of the Mississippi's sources
was going forward. From the windows of one of the
rooms Senator Benton and his family were invited to
view the funeral procession as it wound down Cap-
itol Hill. Fremont, on leave of absence for the day,
was the host of the occasion. Notwithstanding his
best uniform, in which he looked very handsome, he
personally tended the cheery log-fire, that gave a touch
of cosiness to the big office, which he had, moreover,
with somewhat reckless extravagance for a man on a
lieutenant's salary, decorated with plants and cut flowers.
From a daintily set table he served, with captivating
grace, coffee and ices. Though the nation mourned,
two hearts, at least, of all who looked upon the solemn
pageant of that day were in gala attire.

The next day, though he discreetly sent Mrs. Benton
the plants and flowers that had done decorative duty in
his office, it availed him nothing in her wise eyes. Jes-
sie was too young, and, besides, she did not wish her to
marry an army man ; the life was too unsettled. Mrs.
Poinsett, the wife of the Secretary of War, was taken
into her confidence, and, as a result, Fremont was or-
dered off to survey the Des Moines River. Jessie,
moreover, as a further diversion, was taken to the wed-
ding of one of her Virginia cousins, which meant rn
those days weeks of festivity.

It was but another case, however, of the best laid

132

JESSIE BENTON

plans that " gang aglee," for in the autumn both Fre-
mont and Jesse Benton were back in Washington, and
on the 19th of October she was courageous enough, in
defiance of both father and mother, whom she not only
loved but truly revered, to become Fremont's wife.
She married too young, she says herself, ever to have
been a belle in the usual acceptation of that term, yet
so gifted has she been with those qualities that evoke
the chivalry of man that but few American women
have had a better right to that title. Though her life
has been one of much exposure, she herself has at all
times been singularly sheltered.

The year following his marriage, Fremont applied to
the Secretary of War for permission to explore the far
West and penetrate the Rockies. The plan was sup-
ported by Benton, who believed that by making surveys
the government would be giving at least a semblance
of protection to its Western possessions. Congress gave
its sanction, and in May, 1842, with a handful of ven-
turesome spirits gathered on the Missouri frontier, Fre-
mont went forth to the exploration of the southern
pass. It was the first of numerous similar expeditions,
his scientific reports of which — going into astronomy,
botany, mineralogy, geology, and geography — were
translated into many tongues, and gave their author
world-wide fame.

During his absences, which were always of uncertain
duration, his wife sometimes remained in her parents*
home. Her father sent for her one morning, when she
had been married about a year, and, pointing out her

13s

FAMOUS AMERICAN BELLES

old place at his library table, he said, " I want you to
resume your place there ; you are too young to fritter
away your life without some useful pursuit." So she
dropped back quite naturally into her old habits
of study, as if her honeymoon days had been but
another form of vacation.

She frequently accompanied Fremont, however, as
far as St. Louis, waiting there for his return, or going
out again to meet him after a fixed time. He was once
eight months overdue, during which period of awful
silence and suspense she had a supper-table set for
him every night with all the comforts and luxuries of
that civilization to which he had been so long a stranger.
He came at length, in the dead of the night, and, rather
than disturb a household, he went to a hotel, and for
the first time in eighteen months slept in a bed.

With whatever misgivings she may have seen him set
out for a field where he would encounter certainly many
dangers, and possibly even death, she never, even when
the opportunity came, of which many a weaker woman
would have availed herself, endeavored to withhold him
from his purpose. He would sometimes, after having
covered many miles of his route, come back to her for
another good-by, overtaking his party again by hard
riding or pressing forward while they were resting.

In the summer of 1843, while he was still on the
frontier gathering together men and animals for his
second expedition, his recall to Washington was or-
dered, to explain there why, making a scientific expe-
dition under the protection of the government, he had

134

JESSIE BENTON

armed his men with the howitzer. The order, how-
ever, never reached him, for he had aheady left St. Louis,
where it fell into the hands of his wife. Though she
still labored under the depression of their recent parting,
she yet, with all the spirit which the emergency de-
manded, sent him a swift messenger, bidding him hurry
off and rest and fatten his animals at Bent's Ford, stating
that there was sufficient reason for the haste which could
not then be given.

When he was quite beyond the reach of recall, for
it was before the days of telegraphy, she wrote to the
colonel of the Topographical Bureau, and confessed
what she had done, at the same time giving ample
reason for her action. To have obeyed the order, she
explained, would have meant the ruin of the expedi-
tion. Together with the time it would have required
to settle the party before he could leave it, the length
of the trip to Washington, and the inevitable delays
there, the early grass would be past its best, and fhe ani-
mals thus would be thrown underfed into the moun-
tains for the winter. She then replied to the charge
made against Fremont in the order of his recall. The
expedition must cross the country of the Blackfeet and
other unfriendly tribes of Indians, with no reverence
whatever for the cause of science, but with a very whole-
some regard for any rights that were backed up with a
howitzer. Her father, who was absent from St. Louis
at the time, endorsed her action, and wrote to Wash-
ington, assuming the responsibility for it, saying he
would call for a court-martial on the point charged

135

FAMOUS AMERICAN BELLES

against Fremont. Nothing further was heard of it,
however, and the precious time, that meant so much
more to the scientific mind of the explorer than to his
government, to which all seasons are the same, was saved.

From an historical point of view this was the most
important of all Fremont's expeditions. With the
French territory which we had acquired by the Louisi-
ana purchase we inherited also France's old feud with
England, the underlying cause of which was the con-
trol of the markets in the East. When we took up
the cudgels, their conflict, so far as the Western hemi-
sphere was involved, had narrowed down to the ulti-
mate possession of that portion of Mexico's territory
which included the harbor of San Francisco. England
had already made her survey of the ground, and her
eye coveted that matchless port. She was the power
we confronted in California when our war with Mexico
ushered in the moment for decisive action. Two cour-
ageous, intensely American men, however, held the situ-
ation in their grasp, — in the Senate, at the climax of his
powers, Benton, who had ever had a jealous eye upon
England's encroachments on our boundary ; in the
field, Fremont, with all the gallantry and spirit that
final coup demanded.

The British admiral, moving with more deUberation
than the American colonel, with characteristic love of
sport and appreciation of success, gracefully accepted
his defeat, and tendered his felicitations to the intrepid
rival, whose flag he found already floating above the
coveted territory.

136

JESSIE BENTON

Fremont, after his gallant conquest, became the vic-
tim of a quarrel between two officers commanding the
United States forces in that vicinity, and was brought
back a prisoner over the territory he had acquired for
his country. During the ninety days of his trial by
court-martial, which stripped him of his commission as
lieutenant-colonel of mounted riflemen, inspired by a
lofty enthusiasm, his nights were devoted to writing
the history of the expedition.

Though he was reinstated by the President, he re-
turned his commission, and in 1848 took out a private
expedition, opening the route from the Mississippi to
San Francisco. His mountaineers flocked to him,
ready to follow wherever he should lead. He had that
faith in himself and in his purpose that evoked a cor-
responding confidence in them, and his presence was
light and warmth and refreshment to their daring
spirit. When it became necessary at times to divide
the party, those who were not with him suffered sorely.
The memorable winter of 1848, however, was one of
hardships for all, travelling days and weeks within sight
of eternal snows. Fremont wrote to his wife during a
brief respite from that agonizing period, when his men
were starving and freezing and wandering off in despair
to lie down alone and die : " We shall yet enjoy quiet
and happiness together ; these are nearly one and the
same to me now. I make frequent pleasant pictures
of the happy home we are to have, and oftenest and
among the pleasantest of all I see our library with its
bright fire in the rainy, stormy days, and the large win-

137

FAMOUS AMERICAN BELLES

dows looking out upon the sea in the bright weather.
I have it all planned in my mind."

Mrs. Fremont was, meanwhile, making ready for the
long journey towards the land of this picture-home.
It was the hrst break from the real home, her father's,
where she had passed the greater part of the eight years
of her married life, five of which her husband had spent
in the field. She started in March, 1849, g^^^S ^7
way of the Isthmus, where the man selected by Mr.
Aspinwall for her guide had many misgivings about
undertaking the charge. He had a wife, who had
prophesied that, coming from Washington, Mrs. Fre-
mont would be " a fine lady" and would make him no
end of trouble, especially concerning the scant attire
of the Indians.

In the sunshine of her presence, however, his mis-
givings melted away. She was not a " fine lady" at all,
he said, that bugbear of his unconventional mind, but
a slender woman with a head so level and a heart so
stout as to render all the more forcible the appeal of
her delicate body.

She was stricken with the fever, and ill for many
weeks in Panama, where she was surrounded with that
warmth of friendship and sympathy which she ever
seemed to attract. In addition to many substantial
evidences of genuine interest in her recovery, one resi-
dent of the city vowed in that event to supply the hos-
pital with limes for a year.

Gold was discovered in California in 1848 When
Mrs. Fremont arrived in San Francisco the people were

138

JESSIE BENTON

in that first frenzy of excitement that disturbed tempo-
rarily the whole aspect of their daily existence. The
population of the towns was flocking to the mines, and
the comparatively few who remained at home had many
novel problems to face. The art of cooking without
eggs and butter had to be acquired, for there were
neither chickens nor cows, though one woman had as
many as thirty-seven satin dresses, " and no two off the
same piece," she averred.

A little Eastern bride, whom San Francisco society,
consisting of sixteen ladies, turned out in a body to
welcome, set up her first household belongings in a
modest frame structure two stories in height, that had
been put up at a cost, out of all proportion to its in-
trinsic value, of ninety thousand dollars.

Yet nothing was so valuable as time, and though it
was estimated to be worth fifty dollars a minute, there
were busy men who paid Mrs. Fremont the compli-
ment of frequent day-time visits

With every personal inducement to favor slave labor
in the new territory, both Fremont and his wife were
among its most strenuous opposers. Not only did they
pay their first house-maid two hundred and forty dollars
a month with perquisites, which included the housing
of her husband and children, yet even with a disposi-
tion to retain her at that neat figure, they found them-
selves obliged to do without her truly valuable assist-
ance when Mrs. Fremont refused the loan of her gowns
as patterns for the wardrobe she was having constructed
at the hands of a Chinese modiste. There were, more-

139

FAMOUS AMERICAN BELLES

over, on the lands that Fremont owned, rich gold de-
posits, which could be most profitably operated by slave
labor.

When the convention to draft the constitution under
which California should come into the Union met at
Monterey, where Fremont had established himself, his
home became the head-quarters for the anti-slavery party.
Its neatness, the smoothness of its internal workings,
and the evident contentment of his wife formed a text
for the friends of free soil, and many an incredulous
opponent was brought to behold, and, seeing, went
away believing in the possibility of domestic happiness
without slaves. Mrs. Fremont had, to be sure, a pref-
erence for underclothing that had been ironed, and
she might have wished also that the two Indian men
who presided in her kitchen and pantry had not been
gifted with such facilities for terminating both the orna-
mental and useful career of her china and glassware.
Yet these small clouds in no way overshadowed her
domestic horizon. Her prejudice to slavery she inher-
ited from both parents, belonging, as she said, " to the
aristocracy of emancipation," or to that class of people
who, owning slaves, quietly gave them their freedom at
infinite sacrifice to themselves, as opposed to the aboli-
tionists of the North, who, with nothing to lose and
much to gain, clamored noisily for that fieedom.

Fremont was the hero of the hour, and could have
been governor of the new State or one of its first Sen-
ators. He chose the latter, however, though it took

him away from those material interests which California

140

JESSIE BENTON

then held for him. Going into the Union as a free
State, it would need in Congress a defence such as no
man could give it with greater loyalty than Fremont.

There is an anecdote told and applied indiscrimi-
nately to various political heroes, most frequently, per-
haps, to Lincoln, to whom, therefore, it may possibly
appertain, demonstrating delicately his deference for
the marital tie. On the night of his election to some
office, and while he was being inundated with the con-
gratulations of the friends who had assisted in the
achievement of his triumph, he further captivated their
fancy by remembering his wife. " Well, gentlemen,"
he said, quietly, " this is very nice, but there is a little
woman around the corner who will be interested in
hearing this news, and if you will just excuse me, I
think I'll step around and tell her."

One woman interested in the balloting of the dele-
gates at San Jose for California's first Senators was not
so conveniently situated. She was at Monterey, and
as a* season of heavy rains was on, there was but little
prospect that her keen desire to know the result would
find immediate gratification. Before just such a merry
blazing fire as his imagination had once conjured up as
a central feature of their library sat Fremont's wife,
her fingers for the first time fashioning a dress for her-
self on the trustworthy outlines of one that had been
ripped up for the purpose. .Her little daughter had
been put to bed, and her companions for the evening
were the Australian woman who had replaced her two

Indian servitors, and whose accustomed fingers plied

141

FAMOUS AMERICAN BELLES

the needle with a more rapid stroke than her own, and
the woman's baby, playing on the bear-skin rug near
the fire. Besides the voice of the woman and an occa-
sional chirrup from the baby, she heard nothing but the
storm without, till the door opened and a man, drip-
ping with rain, stood on the threshold and asked, in
consideration of his sorry plight, if he might enter.

It was Fremont. He had torn himself away from
his idolizing followers and ridden out into the darkness
and storm to tell his wife, seventy miles away, that he
had been elected to the United States Senate. Though
it was late in the night when he reached Monterey, he
was in the saddle again before dawn and on his way
back to San Jose, making in all a ride of one hundred
and forty miles.

The home-bound steamer, sailing from San Francisco
on the 1st of January, 1850, carried, among others,
the first two Senators from the new State, Fremont and
Givin. At Mazatlan a British man-of-war fired a
salute in honor of these two distinguished passengers.

They landed in New York the last of March, and

from the long mirror into which she looked, in her

hotel bedroom, there gazed back at Mrs. Fremont a

comely young woman clad in a riding habit that had

been abbreviated to a convenient walking length, a pair

of black satin slippers, a leghorn hat tied down with a

China crepe scarf, and a Scotch plaid shawl that had

borne the brunt of her year's outing, — in a word, the

wife of a United States Senator from the golden West.

On another morning of the early spring two years

142

JESSIE BENTON

later, such were the contrasts which the events of her
hfe produced, she stood in the throne-room of Buck-
ingham Palace, awaiting presentation to the Queen of
England. To the British eyes that looked upon her
she was a graceful, distinguished woman, sharing in the
renown of her husband, the American explorer, and a
recent medallist of the Royal Geographical Society,
whose honors are only conferred upon those whose
expeditions are taken out at personal cost and sacrifice.
In the faultless details of her court dress she was a
gratification to the most critical taste. Its exquisite
design, shading in color from the faint pink that touches
the outer edge of a rose petal to the deeper tone it
assumes near the heart, with clusters of the fair flower
itself giving it an almost fragrant emphasis and bring-
ing out the delicate beauty of her fine face, seemed a
part of herself, so gracefully did she wear it, carrying its
sweep of train with a queenliness that was of her nature.
On the 17th of June, 1856, Fremont was unani-
mously nominated for the Presidency by the National
Republican Convention at Philadelphia. He was the
first choice of the Free Soil, which became, later, the
RepubHcan party, and he was also, probably, the only
man of whom Lincoln, the first successful candidate of
that party, was ever jealous. Fearing a military rival,
and recognizing in Fremont the qualities that gave him
a natural supremacy among men, he kept him In the
background. He foresaw correctly. The military hero
came, but he came in the person of the man to whom
opportunity had been a fairy god-mother.

143

FAMOUS AMERICAN BELLES

Though he polled the vote of all the Northern States
but five, the time was not ripe for a Republican Presi-
dent when Fremont was a candidate for that high
honor. The men, like Benton, who still led the politi-
cal thought of that day, and who knew every aspect
of the country, realizing the peril that lay in counte-
nancing sectionalism, could not give their support to a
candidate who stood upon a sectional platform.

Whatever were his hopes or his disappointment, his
wife shared them. His accepting the nomination from
so radical a party had meant the breaking up of many
friendships for her, which in itself was a genuine grief
to a woman of her temperament. The anguish she
endured during the first months of the war between
the North and the South, which she spent in St. Louis
among familiar faces, whom the circumstances of her
position as the wife of a Northern general had es-
tranged from her, left its record in her beautiful hair,
which, from a warm brown, became quite white within
a few weeks. No matter with what heroism we endure,
we sometimes bear all the rest of our lives the scars
which our courage has cost us.

** She has never outgrown, however, her early attach-
ment to the South, to which she is united by many ties
of blood. During the famine there that followed the
war she applied to Congress for relief, which was imme-
diately granted, with a ship to carry all the supplies the
Freedman's Bureau could furnish. With warm and
tender sympathies she has always taken up any cause

that appealed to her with an enthusiasm that communi-

144

JESSIE BENTON

cated itself to others. Relating to Mrs. Dix one even-
ing the case of one of Lieutenant Fremont's men, who
had been disabled by being wounded in both legs, and
to whom Congress had refused a pension on the ground
that he had not been regularly enlisted at the time the
wound was inflicted, she did not observe that a man
who was calling upon Senator Dix was attentively lis-
tening to all the graphic details of her story. It was
Preston King, of New York, and at that time chair-
man of the Committee on Appropriations. He took
Senator Dix to the door with him when he left, and
bade him tell her to write out the story as she had just
told it and send it to him, and he would see that the
man got his pension ; and he did.

With what tender gratitude and reverence the man
himself, Alexis Ayot, a Canadian by birth, came to
thank her !

" I cannot kneel to thank you," he said, balancing
himself upon his crutches, " Je n'ai plus de jambes ;
but you are my Sainte Madonne, et je. vous fais ma
priere."

During her early California days she extended her
generous young hand to a youthful compositor who
was working on the Golden Era. He dined with
her every Sunday, and she ga^e him not only that
recognition and encouragement that were in themselves
a stimulus to his talent and ambition, but she used her
influence to obtain for him salaried offices that lifted
him above anxiety concerning his material condition,
and gave him the leisure necessary to the best devel-
lo 145

FAMOUS AMERICAN BELLES

opment of his genius. His name is Bret Harte, and so
entirely did he recognize his indebtedness to her that he
once wrote to her : " If I were to be cast away on a
desert island, I should expect a savage to come forward
with a three-cornered note from you to tell me that at
your request I had been appointed governor of the
island at a salary of two thousand four hundred dol-
lars."

She has both the versatility and adaptiveness that are
characteristic of the genuine American woman, and
which have enabled her to make almost as many friends
in foreign lands as she has throughout her own country.
The Count de la Garde, a cousin of Eugene and Hor-
tense Beauharnais, whom she knew in Paris, and who
left her at his death a valuable collection of sou-
venirs of the Bonaparte family, said of her that she was
the only American woman he had ever known. He
had known others of her countrywomen, but they were
but imitations of English or French women, while in her
he felt the originality and individuality of another people.

As a scientist and explorer, Fremont's reputation
had gone forth to the countries of Europe, from many
of which he received enviable honors and decorations.
He and his wife were presented at the courts of Eng-
land, France, and Denmark, attending at Copenhagen
the wedding-festivities of the Crown Prince and his
Swedish bride. As one of her friends has cleverly said
of Mrs. Fremont, " she has entertained and been enter-
tained through not only the gamut but the chromatic

scale of society."

146

JESSIE BENTON

After the war, while her younger children were still
growing up, and during her husband's lifetime, she lived
for some years in New York, on a picturesque old
property on the Hudson that still bore its Indian name,
Pocaho. Now, however, she lives again in the State
that once gave her health, wealth, and honors, near the
great sea, away from which she feels that she is never
fully alive.

Her life has been full of changes and events, to all
of which her alert intelligence and quick sympathies
have made her keenly susceptible, and which wrung
from her recently a plaintive, " We are tired, my heart
and I." That was all, for one who knew every phase
of her life has already borne testimony to that " sweet
and happy and forbearing temper which has remained
proof against the wearing of time."

147

SALLIE WARD

(mRS. GEORGE F. DOWNs)

ONE of those extraordinary women which the
world from time to time produces, who rise
to eminence solely through the force of their
own personality, was born in America as the nineteenth
century was rounding out its first quarter. Known all
her life throughout the entire country, she was one of
the most conspicuous figures in the life of the South
and Southwest, and was the object of a sentiment that
fell but little short of worship among the people of the
state of Kentucky, to which she belonged.

James Lane Allen who has studied his people from
every stand-point, draws the typical Kentucky woman
for us as " a refinement of the English blonde, with
greater delicacy of form, feature, and color."

" A beautiful Kentucky woman," he says, " is apt to
be exceedingly beautiful. Her voice is almost uni-
formly low and soft, her hands and feet delicately
formed, her skin quite pure and beautiful in tint and
shading, her eyes blue or brown, her hair nut-brown or
golden ; to all which is added a certain unapproach-
able refinement."

Of such a class, Sallie Ward, with her blue eyes full

148

SALLIE WARD

of twinkling humor and rather far apart, lending to
her round face an expression of candor, which was
further borne out by her somewhat large though finely
shaped mouth disclosing handsome teeth in her happy
tendency to frequent smiling, her brown hair, and a skin
faultless in tint and texture, has been the most noted
representative. A radiant woman, instinct with spark-
ling life from the crown of her beautiful head to the
tips of her slender feet, spoiled, wilful, lovely, and lov-
ing, it is probable that but few people will ever truly
estimate her character.

She was the daughter of Robert J. Ward, a man of
considerable wealth and of that distinction of manner
and bearing which is commonly designated as of the
old school. Like many another gifted young Ken-
tuckian, similarly placed in life, he began his career
with political aspirations, and before he had reached his
thirtieth year he had been elected Speaker of the State
Assembly. His own private concerns, however, gradu-
ally absorbing his time and interest, drew him away
from his youthful ambitions. He married the heiress
of a large fortune. Miss Floumoy, of Georgetown,
Kentucky, the descendant of an old Huguenot family,
to whose fame her immediate ancestors had further
contributed by the gallant part they had taken in the
war of the American Revolution.

Sallie Ward, one of the eldest of a large family of

children, was born on her grandfather's estate in Scott

County. She went to boarding-school in Philadelphia,

the reputation of whose educational institutions in the

149

FAMOUS AMERICAN BELLES

first half of the century surpassed those of any other
city in the country. At even an earlier period, an
entry in the journal of Charles Carroll of Carrollton,
one of the most enlightened men of his age, shows in
what high estimation they were held, from the fact that
he mentions no other, though the praise in this instance
is rather of a negative order. He records in 1816 that
he has sent his little granddaughter, Mary Harper, to
a school in Poitiers under the care of Mr. Gallatin,
then our minister to France, " where she will be more
piously educated than in the very best boarding-school
in Philadelphia."

There were some good students, no doubt, to uphold
the reputation of well-established schools, though it was
before the influence of Hannah Adams, the pioneer of
a broader education for women, had been widely felt,
and before that delicate balance between the mental
and physical being of a girl student had ever been dis-
turbed by over-study. With that " little learning," that
was not " a dangerous thing" from the point of view of
the women of that day, there were many with a mental
sprightliness that was far more exhilarating than all
their deep draughts from the Pierian spring had ren-
dered a few such women as Hannah Adams. A dis-
appointed man who once made a stage-coach journey
with her related that she only opened her lips to enumer-
ate the pieces of baggage with which she was encum-
bered, lest in her descent she should, in the preoccupa-
tion of her mind, leave behind her either her " great box,

little box, or bandbox."

ISO

Sallie Ward

(Mrs. George F. Downs)

From a miniature

SALLIE WARD

Sallie Ward, in deference perhaps to the prejudices of
her French origin, was sent to a school presided over by
a woman of that nationality. She enUvened its atmos-
phere of conventional elegance by many startling
ebullitions of her undisciplined young spirits, such as
appearing unannounced in male attire at wholly inap-
propriate moments. Then, as everybody disappeared
with more haste than dignity, her own uncontrollable
laughter would reveal the truth of the situation. Some
one would exclaim, " Sallie Ward I" and the others
would troop back to admire her, for, if a little effemi-
nate, she made, nevertheless, a very captivating youth,
and no school-mistress could ever look into her beam-
ing face and find it in her heart to be harsh to her.

Her own mother attempted once when she was a
very little child to punish her for some misdemeanor,
but Sallie, divining her purpose, dropped quickly on
her knees and raised her little hands in supplication.
There seemed at that moment something so seraphic in
her childish beauty that her mother afterwards admitted
that her good intentions were involuntarily thwarted.
Though the rod was always soared, she grew up to be
none the less lovable, though a woman of the world
in all things rather than a woman of the spirit, — the
logical result of her environment.

A subtle quality that goes forth from some personali-
ties, commanding instant attention and reverence, went
forth from Sallie Ward, evoking everywhere admiration
and love. She reahzed the power herself, and it en-
abled her to do everything with an indefinable grace pro-

151

FAMOUS AMERICAN BELLES

ceeding from an absolute self-confidence. That which
would have seemed daring coming from another woman
was approved and applauded in Sallie Ward. She pos-
sessed a knowledge of horses that is more or less com-
mon among the women of Kentucky, and rode with a
dash and skill which the women of no other State have
ever surpassed. She sometimes capriciously utilized
this accomplishment to test a man's devotion, doing
apparently without premeditation some daring feat and
discovering thereby the extent to which he would fol-
low her, for every man was at least worth measuring
weapons with, though in the process she unwittingly,
no doubt, despoiled many a less dazzUng woman.
She was, however, only exercising what she conceived
to be the prerogative of every woman. While riding in
Louisville one day she came upon the market-house,
which ran for some distance through the centre of the
street. Instead of going around it, she impulsively
dashed through it without in any degree slackening her
speed. The man who was with her unhesitatingly fol-
lowed, and was rewarded, as he drew up beside her
on emerging from the far end of the structure, with an
arch smile and " Now, sir, you'll have a pretty fine to
pay, twenty-five dollars apiece, for that little stretch."
When he went the next day, however, to pay the penalty
for the pretty caprice, he found that the obligation had
already been quietly discharged by Miss Ward herself

She had innumerable lovers and suitors all her life,
and never, even in its closing years, entered any assem-
blage, small or great, private or public, that her name

1^2

SALLIE WARD

did not pass from mouth to mouth till all were aware
of her presence. She was the glorious heroine of
many a shy girl's first ball, while the forlorn little maid
whom it purported to introduce to the social world
clung timidly to the wall, with admiring eyes, how-
ever paradoxical it may seem, upon the radiant being
who with apparent unconsciousness was carrying off
all the honors of the occasion. The remarkable popu-
larity of Sallie Ward has been compared to that of a
feudal princess in her hereditary domain. It was con-
fined to no class, but entered into all grades of society,
parents in all walks of life naming their children after
her, and children in turn naming their pets after her.
Alany a product of the far-famed stock-farms of the
blue-grass State was likewise honored with a name that
came to be a synonyme for all excellence. " It is a per-
fect Sallie Ward," or, " I've a regular Sallie Ward," was
the proud boast of many a man who owned anything
whatsoever that he esteemed of superlative quality.

A mother once putting her little girl to bed related
to her as a lullaby the story of the creation of the
world, pointing out its beauties and blessings as they
came from the hand of God.

" He made the sun that shines in the day," said the
mother, " and the moon and the stars that we see in
the night, and all the flowers that beautify the world,
and the birds that gladden it with their sweet song."

" And mother, don't forget," interrupted the child.
He made Sallie Ward, too."

When the governor of Kentucky, at the outbreak

153

FAMOUS AMERICAN BELLES

of the Mexican War, was called upon to furnish a
regiment of infantry, both the Louisville Legion and
the Louisville Guard, among whose officers and men
were enrolled many names of which the State was justly
proud, volunteered for service. Sallie Ward was selected
to present the flags to both companies, and the enthu-
siasm of the people, when on the bright May morning
of their departure the Legion passed in review before
her home, testified to the concurrence of the entire city
in the choice. There was a prolonged shout of rapture
from the throng of spectators as many eyes dim with
weeping beheld the already familiar form of SaUie
Ward standing beneath the silken folds of her coun-
try's flag. Their cheers redoubled as she presented it
to the standard-bearer, and they continued to ring in
her ears as she waved her own farewell to the embryo
heroes, many of whom carried away that last picture of
her standing in the sunshine of that bright morning
to be an inspiration in a darker hour. She drove
to Portland to present the flag to the Guards, who em-
barked from that point. As they marched by the open
carriage in which she sat at the conclusion of the cere-
mony of the presentation, every man saluted her, and
she afterwards declared that it was the proudest mo-
ment in a life of many triumphs.

Her father's wealth not only enabled him to main-
tain one of the most elaborate establishments in Louis-
ville, but in the summer to transport his numerous
family, accompanied by men- and maid-servants, in
travelling-carriages to the White Sulphur Springs, where

154

SALLIE WARD

his daughters were successively belles. A portion of
each winter, including the season of the Mardi Gras,
was spent in New Orleans, for though the facilities for
travelling that exist to-day were not known at that
time, a man blessed with the worldly goods that Mr.
Ward possessed could not only permit his family to
make frequent journeys, but to make them also under
most comfortable and agreeable circumstances.

In this way the fame of Sallie Ward was well estab-
lished at the South when, before she had reached her
twentieth year, she married Bigelow Lawrence, of Bos-
ton, and entered upon her brief career at the North.
The man who thus won her from many Southern
rivals was many years her senior, and it was to a
woman of her temperament a most unfortunate alli-
ance. He was the son of the Hon. Abbott Law-
rence, who had been our minister to England, and
was himself a man of wealth and distinction and an
exquisite gentleman of the severe Boston school, whose
ethics were wholly at variance with that spirit of
liberality which was all Sallie Ward had hitherto known.
Developed in an atmosphere of almost passionate ad-
miration, love and appreciation had become as neces-
sary to her being as light and air. Transplanted in the
very effulgence of her bloom to a frigid temperature of
critical and unsympathetic surroundings, all her spon-
taneous grace congealed into acts of deliberate effron-
tery. Bewildered by a chill she had never before felt,
too young and inexperienced in the ways of the world
beyond those of her own genial climate, where she had

155

FAMOUS AMERICAN BELLES

been a law unto herself, to realize aught of the value
of mutual concessions, she struck blindly against the
cold conventionality in which she felt herself encaged.
It was a strange and almost cruel fate that put her in
the bosom of the Lawrence family, and occasioned as
much suffering to her Southern heart as to their Northern
sensibilities.

At a ball given in Boston about the time Mrs.
Bloomer was seeking to introduce her reform in woman's
dress, and while the subject was being widely discussed.
Sallie Ward, then the wife of Bigelow Lawrence, ap-
peared in a costume designed on the Bloomer pattern.
Socially conservative Boston was agog, and Lawrence
achieved through his wife an unenviable notoriety.
Another of her proclivities wrought additional sensa-
tion and consequently further havoc in his social status.
Notwithstanding the natural beauty of her complexion,
it was whispered even in Louisville that she sought with
more or less artistic skill to further embellish it. One
day when the artifice was unusually apparent, as she
passed a group of laboring men, one exclaimed, audibly,
"By God, painted I" Nothing daunted and without
changing color, the story runs, she said, quietly, " Yes,
painted by God," and passed on.

Her mother, realizing the unhappy condition of her
life with Mr. Lawrence, took her home, and within a
year she applied to the Legislature of Kentucky for a
divorce, which was granted on the ground of incom-
patibility of temper. She took her maiden name and
lived for several years in retirement.

156

SALLIE WARD

Her first reappearance in that world of gayety and
social emulation which was her natural element was
at a ball given in Louisville, and where at midnight,
though everybody knew she was in the house, she
had not yet made her appearance. Shortly after twelve
o'clock the music suddenly ceased ; in an instant silence
fell upon the ball-room ; some one whispered " Sallie
Ward," and every one pressed towards the stairway.
She was, indeed, a vision of radiant loveliness that
held every man and woman spellbound as she de-
scended its winding length. She was enveloped in
white tulle, which seemed to float about her like a cloud,
a jewelled pin catching the meshes of a filmy veil and
holding it imprisoned in her brown hair. One arm
covered with jewelled bracelets was extended, the hand
resting in that of the man who had the honor of lead-
ing her. So light and floating was the effect she pro-
duced that the tips of her white slippers seemed scarcely
to touch the steps.

She was at all times supreme and irresistible without
resorting to extraordinary effects, which she frequently
did, for she was not lacking in that vanity which is " the
cordial drop," said John Adams, " that makes the bitter
cup of life go down," though an existence filled with
so many sweets as was hers could have needed no such
stimulus.

At a fancy-dress ball given in her honor at Lexing-
ton, she created an unparalleled sensation by changing
her costume four times in the course of the evening,
reaching the climax as an houri.

157

FAMOUS AMERICAN BELLES

Her second marriage was to Dr. Hunt, of New
Orleans, where she was already well known. The city,
with its contingent of wealthy Spanish and French
planters, contained many homes whose palatial splendors
exceeded those of the most pretentious establishments
of other localities. The new home in which Sallie
Ward came to preside was on a scale of magnificence
that fully gratified her luxurious tastes and love of the
beautiful. Its rich adornment of tapestries, statuary,
and Parisian furnishings, its marble court, with its glis-
tening fountains and wealth of tropical bloom, formed
an exquisite background for her artistic individuality
and prodigal temperament. Its hospitalities were mu-
nificent and the legend of the magnificence of its dinner-
parties, during which the orchestra from the French
opera filled the court-yard and dining-room with its
melodies, was the marvel of a people accustomed to
entertaining with all the luxurious accompaniments of
a most artistic civilization; and into all of whose forms
of a ceremonious existence there entered a perfect har-
mony that was a second nature to them.

The years of her residence in New Orleans represent
the most brilliant period of Sallie Ward's life, when her
surroundings, combined with her natural gifts, gave her
easily that leading position which she filled so graciously
and with so much happiness to herself Her only child,
Mr. John Hunt, of New York, was born of this
marriage.

After her husband's death she returned to Louisville,
and there for some years devoted herself to rearing and

158

SALLIE WARD

educating her son. She was subsequently twice mar-
ried, the first time, after nearly fifteen years of widow-
hood, to Mr. Vene P. Armstrong, and the second time
to Mr, George F. Downs, both of Kentucky. She
retained till the end of her life, which closed in
the summer of 1898, all her remarkable powers of
attraction.

Surrounded always with the pomp and vanity of
life, and deeply imbued with the maxims of a worldly
philosophy, she yet preserved intact an unselfish heart
that not only prompted her to many deeds of noble
philanthropy, but to countless little acts of kindness
graciously performed that beautified lives less fortunate
than her own. With her quick bright mind and gift
for clever repartee, she sent many a ripple of irresistible
drollery over the current of the life that encircled her,
and sped many a shaft of stinging wit into the armor
of a hollow conventionality. " How lovely of you to
say that ! but then you always say such sweet things
of everybody," was the meaningless flattery in the
response of a woman to whom she had spoken in
heartfelt praise of another woman. "Did you ever
hear, madam," retorted Mrs. Downs, " that I had said
anything sweet of you V*

She never could have attracted and held the uni-
versal homage that was undoubtedly hers had there
not radiated from her a power quite beyond that
bestowed by the material possessions of the world, —
the potency of a vivid and lovable personaHty. Had
she been a man, she would have been capable of

159

FAMOUS AMERICAN BELLES

such acts of gallantry and daring as characterized
" mad" Anthony Wayne or General Custer. As she
was a woman, with her field restricted to the social
world, from whose stand-point she must necessarily,
therefore, be judged, her singular genius was productive
of many extraordinary achievements, through all of
which there was a very audible appeal for the love that
never failed her, but which was given to her in such
measure as perhaps to no other woman ever born in
America.

i6o

HARRIET LANE

(mRS. henry ELLIOTT JOHNSTON)

OF the men who have filled the Presidential chair
of the United States, about none as about James
Buchanan has romance hung that halo which
in his case tends but to throw into bolder relief the sub-
stantial side of his character. Men of more dash, of
more picturesque individuality have filled that high
office than was he who rose to it through the grada-
tions of a long legislative career.

When he entered Congress, though he was but
twenty-nine years old, the chapter of sentiment had
already closed for him, and it was never reopened
during a long life, the greater part of which was
passed in the gaze of a scrutinizing public. This fact
alone is sufficient to render him unique in the estima-
tion of a people who have a primitive love for the
story where all ends happily.

There was nothing in Buchanan's appearance nor in
his attitude towards life in general that suggested the
tragic episode of his youth. It is only in retrospect
that we realize the glamour it cast over his subsequent
years. Nature reacts through various channels, and in
him she sought her outlet in an unabating mental
activity. He was a student all his life.

To the world he was a man of somewhat grave ap-

II i6i

FAMOUS AMERICAN BELLES

pearance, a typical anglo-saxon, immaculate in his dress,
conservative in his speech, and yet with a grace and
dignity of manner that added much to the distinction
with which he represented his country at the court of
Russia in 1832, and again twenty-one years later at the
court of St. James.

His attitude towards women was that of chivalric
regard, and the close relationship he bore to one of the
most beautiful women of her period, being both her
uncle and guardian, displays one of the most interesting
sides of his character. Much of the charm that at-
taches to the history of the more conspicuous years of
his public career emanates from Harriet Lane. No
woman has ever presided in the White House who
roused so universal an interest, unless it was Mrs. Cleve-
land, as did Buchanan's niece.

Her countrymen honored her in every conceivable
way, and her name was a household word. Vessels of
war and of peace bore it to foreign shores. Clubs,
streets, houses, and even articles of dress were named
after her.

There was a majestic isolation about both Harriet

Lane and James Buchanan. Death had stripped them

both, — Buchanan in his youth of the woman who might

have rounded out his life, and Harriet Lane, one by one,

of mother, father, sister, and brothers. She came

into the White House bearing the burden of personal

loss in the recent death of her only sister. As she

came out of it the travail of coming war had already

cast its shadow upon the nation.

162

HARRIET LANE

Yet, socially, the White House was never so bril-
liant as it was during the administration of Buchanan.
" The White House," said Jefferson Davis, referring
later to his last days in Washington, " under the ad-
ministration of Buchanan approached more nearly to
my idea of a republican court than the President's
house had ever done before, or since the days of
Washington."

A picture that the people seemed never to tire of
looking upon was of the grave bachelor-President with
his beautiful niece beside him doing the honors of the
nation. She was at the climax of her glorious woman-
hood during the period she passed in the White House.
Contact with the world, together with her recent touch
of sorrow, had worn away the angles of her youthful
exuberance. She had attained a golden maturity, and
with a perfection of physical development she united a
dignity and a confidence in herself restful to behold.
" Every motion," Mary Clemmer wrote of her at that
time, " was instinct with life, health, and intelligence.
Her head and features were cast in noble mould, and
her form, which at rest had something of the massive
majesty of a marble pillar, in motion was instinct alike
with power and grace."

She had a warmth of coloring that further bore out
the idea of abundant health. Her hair was of a golden-
brown hue, and worn always with that absolute sim-
plicity which best became her well-shaped head. Her
eyes were of a deep violet and her mouth was fault-
lessly beautiful, with its full red lips and upward curve.

163

FAMOUS AMERICAN BELLES

She was as discreet, said one of her admiring critics,
as she was beautiful, and her uncle's confidence in her
was without bounds. Even as a little child, when
falling far short in many respects of his somewhat
austere ideals of propriety, she had inspired in him a
reverence for her absolute truthfulness. " She never
told a lie," he once said, in speaking of her childhood ;
" she had a soul above deceit or fraud. She was too
proud for it."

She came into Buchanan's life like a breath of wind
from the mountain-side, fresh, sweet, and wild. Bu-
chanan was distraught. His bachelor habitat was in
confusion. He was a man of theories and ideals. This
bit of youthful life that had elected to invade the quiet
of his days was a being of impulse, however generous,
of exuberant health and spirits. A sense of his su-
periority, however, penetrating her youthful intelli-
gence, gave him that influence over her that was pro-
ductive of such satisfactory results as she grew to
womanhood.

Through her father, Elliot Lane, whose family had
emigrated to Virginia during the war of the American
Revolution, she was of English descent. From the
north of Ireland, about the same time, also had come
her maternal grandfather, James Buchanan. He mar-
ried Elizabeth Spear, the daughter of a farmer, and
settled in Franklin County, Pennsylvania, then and for
some years later central ground and the great highway
between the East and the West. James Buchanan,

afterwards President of his country, and Jane, the

164

Harriet Lane

(Mrs. Henry Elliott Johnston)

From photograph by Julius Ulke

HARRIET LANE

mother of Harriet Lane, were the first two children
bom of this marriage.

Harriet Lane, the youngest of four children, became
an orphan in her tenth year. She attached herself
voluntarily to her already distinguished uncle, who was
at the time in the United States Senate, having but
recently returned from Russia, where he had negotiated
our first commercial treaty with that country.

Somewhat abashed though duly touched by the
honor conferred upon him by his ardent little kins-
woman, he undertook the novel responsibility of her
upbringing with such misgivings as he had never been
conscious of when accepting the various high honors
bestowed upon him by his country. She quitted the
home in Mercersburg, Pennsylvania, where she was
born, and her uncle's home,. Wheatland, became
thenceforth hers. It was a roomy old brick house
with ample grounds, on East King Street, in Lancaster,
one of the old colonial towns of Pennsylvania.

It has been said, in no matter how many places we
may live, there is only one that is home to us. Wheat-
land was that to Harriet Lane, though she was des-
tined to see much of the world and to spend years at
a time away from its tranquil seclusion. Its improve-
ment and adornment were ever matters of keen in-
terest to her. There she first attracted an admiration
which gradually extended over her own country and
England, for the fame of Harriet Lane was international.
There she had possession of her uncle, it being their

custom to spend their mornings together, usually in

165

FAMOUS AMERICAN BELLES

reading the newspapers, she incidentally absorbing his
statesmanlike view of the political questions of the
day.

Buchanan frequently entertained at Wheatland both
his political friends and those he had made through his
diplomatic relations. His niece was a truly betwitching
hostess on these occasions, to which there often attached
much that was brilliant.

The first attempt at training after she passed under
her uncle's care was not a happy one in the estimation
of his young ward. Being obliged to go to Washing-
ton for the session of Congress, he closed his home at
Lancaster and transferred his menage to the capital, for
Buchanan always set up his household gods wherever
he tarried for any length of time, his housekeeper. Miss
Hetty Parker, who served him in that capacity for
forty years, going with him from place to place. Har-
riet was left in Lancaster, in the home of some venerable
spinsters of her uncle's acquaintance, who had pro-
nounced ideas on the moral gait to be maintained by
the rising generation. From her own accounts, given
in letters to her uncle, she seems to have been fre-
quently disciplined by means of her healthy young
appetite. There were melodramatic occasions when
she went without sugar in her tea, and was com-
pelled to practise various similar mortifications of the
flesh for which no small girl has a natural bent. After
she was removed from these uncongenial surroundings
she lived for some time in dread of an adverse circum-
stance that might return her to them. Her uncle, on

i66

HARRIET LANE

whom neither the pathos nor the humor of the situa-
tion was lost, more than once suggested quizzically in
his letters to her that she might like to go back to the
old ladies.

When they were separated he wrote to her every
day, at first from conscientious motives of the duty he
owed to her, and later because of the pleasure he de-
rived from this frequent interchange of thought and
sympathy. When she was twelve years old he sent
her with her sister, Mary, to boarding-school at Charles-
town, West Virginia.

" Had Mary written to me that you were a good
girl and had behaved yourself entirely well, I should
have visited you during the Christmas holidays," he
said, in the course of a letter written to her shortly after
her initiation into boarding-school life.

In 1845 Buchanan became Secretary of State under
President Polk. " My labors are great," he wrote to
Harriet, shortly after entering upon the duties of his
new office, " but they do not ' waf me down, as you
write the word. Now I would say ' weighs' but doctors
may differ on this point." Further on in the same
letter he continues thus : " Your friends, Mrs. Bancroft
[wife of the Secretary of War] and the Pleasantons
often inquire for you. They have given you some-
what of a name here, and Mrs. Polk and Miss Rucker,
her niece, have several times ^irged me to permit you
to come and pass some time with them. I have been
as deaf as the adder to their request, knowing, to use a
word of your grandmother, that you are too ' outset-

167

FAMOUS AMERICAN BELLES

ting' already. There is a time for all things under the
sun, as the wise man says, and your time will yet
come." Again, he sends love from Miss Hetty, his
housekeeper, and a message to the effect that she would
be glad to see Harriet in Washington. " I fear she
might be twice glad," added Buchanan, " once on
your arrival and still more so on your departure."

It was Buchanan's custom to spend his summers or a
portion of them at Bedford Springs, taking his nieces
with him. To the younger it has ever been a place of
happy memories. There, when she was still quite a
young girl, she met the man, then also full of all the
enthusiasm of youth, to whom, after exacting a pro-
longed devotion, she finally surrendered herself

In one of her uncle's letters written to her in the
summer of 1846 he tells her he will not be able to go
to Bedford before the 1 oth of August, " when the sea-
son will be over and it will be too late for Mary to
enact the character of belle; and you," he continued,
" are quite too young to make the attempt."

He placed her, the autumn of that year, in the Visi-
tation Convent, in Georgetown, whence she was gradu-
ated three years later with much distinction. She
passed one Sunday in every month during these three
years at her uncle's home on F Street, there catching
her first glimpse of that world of which she was later to
form a part. Her uncle was still Secretary of State, and
his home was frequented by the most illustrious men
who made up the public life of that day. There Harriet,
looking upon herself as a full-fledged young lady, spent

168

HARRIET LANE

the first winter after her liberation from school duties.
The following year, however, she passed quietly among
her relatives in Pennsylvania, which was more in accord
with her uncle's wishes, for she was still very young.
The decision to do so was entirely voluntary on her
part, which pleased Buchanan greatly, for he realized
fully what a fascination the gay life of the capital held
for a young girl in her high social position. He wrote
her a letter full of praise for controlling what he knew
to be her inclination and remaining at home. " This
act' of self-restraint has raised you in my estimation,"
he wrote, and then went on to relate frankly how gay
the city was, and concluded by assuring her that Mr.
John Sullivan, an Irish gentleman famous for his din-
ners, would be inconsolable when he learned that she
was not to be there that winter.

It is supposed that no American woman ever had
more offers of marriage than Harriet Lane, and it is
evident, from a letter written her by her uncle about
this time, that suitors had already begun to present them-
selves. " I wish now to give you a caution," he wrote:
" never allow your affections to become interested, or
engage yourself to any person, without my previous
advice. You ought never to marry any person who is
not able to afford you a decent and immediate support.
In my experience I have witnessed the long years of
patient misery and dependence. which fine women have
endured from rushing precipitately into matrimonial
connections without sufficient reflection. Look ahead
and consider the future, and act wisely in this particular."

169

FAMOUS AMERICAN BELLES

With the incoming of Taylor's administration Bu-
chanan retired to Wheatland, spending the ensuing four
years there with occasional sallies to Washington and
his summers as usual at Bedford Springs.

Harriet Lane was already a belle of far more than
local repute when in 1852, her uncle having been ap-
pointed minister to England, she accompanied him
thither.

Through the effect she produced in a strange land
Buchanan probably for the first time fully realized how
unusually beautiful she was. So favorable was the im-
pression she made upon the queen that on state occa-
sions she was assigned to places usually given only to
the wives of ambassadors and ministers. She was well
known throughout England, and on the day that Oxford
University conferred the degree of Doctor of Civil
Laws upon her uncle and Alfred Tennyson its ancient
walls rang with the cheers that went up from its hun-
dreds of students who rose en masse to greet the entrance
of Harriet Lane.

" She was a most distinguished young person," said
one of her countrymen recently, growing enthusiastic
over the recollection of the impression she created,
" whom more than one Englishman would have given
his head to marry."

Her beauty was not less appreciated by the artistic
eye of the French people, and Mr. James Edward
MacFarland, who was secretary of the American lega-
tion at the time of her visit to the family of Mr. John
Y. Mason, then our minister to France, was full of

HARRIET LANE

anecdotes of the naivete with which the people in the
streets of Paris were wont to express their admira-
tion.

Shortly after her return to America the loss of her
only sister, Mrs. George W. Baker, who died in Cali-
fornia, sent Harriet Lane into deep mourning. While
the country was filled with stories of her beauty and
the impression it had created in foreign capitals she
was passing her days in the grateful quiet of Wheat-
land. Her uncle's nomination to the Presidency but
added to her fame, the campaign, election, and inaugu-
ration bringing her gradually into that eminent position
she was so admirably fitted to fill. At the ball attend-
ing the inaugural ceremonies at Washington she made
her first reappearance in public, clad, as best became
her noble form, in the simplicity of a white dress,
flower trimmed, and with a necklace of pearls.

In those days, before social functions had attained
the proportions that now characterize them, they re-
flected in the White House, as elsewhere, more of the
individuality of the host and hostess than is now pos-
sible. Many details that are now consigned to secre-
taries and stewards then appertained to the master and
mistress of the house. Harriet Lane and her cousin
James Buchanan Henry, who acted as private secretary
to his uncle, invariably arranged the seating of the
guests at state dinners, an onerous task now performed
by an under-secretary of the Executive Mansion, who,
besides being familiar with the rules of official prece-
dence, must also know something of the social relation-

171

FAMOUS AMERICAN BELLES

ship each guest bears to his possible neighbor. She
made no mistakes, for she had been trained to her posi-
tion as had none of her predecessors, unless we except
the wives of the two Adamses.

In i860, when the Prince of Wales visited Eng-
land's North American possessions, on President
Buchanan's suggestion and invitation, he extended his
travels so as to include at least a portion of the United
States. The memory of his sojoum among us still
lives in many of the cities and towns whose territory
had once formed part of the kingdom of his ances-
tors. The five days he spent in Washington were
passed in the White House. A guest of the nation at
the capital is usually assigned to a suite of rooms in
one of the hotels of the city. Between Buchanan and
the Prince of Wales, however, owing to the former's
recent residence at the court of St. James, there ex-
isted more of a personal feeling than is usual between
the President and state guests.

In all the festivities by which the Executive Mansion
did honor to his presence the unerring hand and fault-
less taste of Harriet Lane were evident.

One memorable day of his visit was spent at Mount

Vernon. The revenue cutter " Harriet Lane" was

selected to take the distinguished little party, consisting

of the President, Miss Lane, the Prince, his suite, and

the British Minister down the river. The simplicity of

George Washington's home and the picturesque beauty

of its situation were themes of interesting study to the

Englishmen. At his tomb they reverently bared their

172

HARRIET LANE

heads, and near it the Prince planted a tree in remem-
brance of the day.

After he left Washington he wrote to the President
expressing his appreciation of the hospitality he had
received, and sending him his portrait painted by Sir
John Watson Gordon, with a set of engravings of the
Royal family for Miss Lane, to whom now also belong
the portrait and the letter, together with one written by
the queen. It echoes the gratification already ex-
pressed by her son concerning the kindliness of his
reception among the American people, and shows in
what high regard she personally held both the President
and his niece.

Buchanan's administration was the last of the old
regime, a period in which there had been that unity of
purpose that had fostered the nation, that wise forebear-
ance that had preserved it, and withal much of illustrious
oratory and brilliant debate. But the parting of the
ways had come. A day of action was at hand. Bu-
chanan, oppressed with a sense of his impotency to
avert a crisis that was inevitable, retired to Wheatland,
and Lincoln, full of high purposes and many mis-
givings, stepped into th« pathway of destiny. Upon
the one public life instantly relaxed its hold, while
about the other it threw its myriad feverish tendrils,
clutching him hourly closer to itself till the long
watches of that fatal April night, during which its im-
perious tenure was loosened by death.

With Buchanan, Harriet Lane also passed from the
horizon of public life, spending with him at Wheat-

1/3

FAMOUS AMERICAN BELLES

land those historic four years that followed her days
in the White House. There, in January, 1866, she
was married to Henry Elliott Johnston, of Baltimore.
The ceremony was performed by her uncle, the Rev.
Edward Y. Buchanan, of the Episcopal Church.

Her honeymoon she passed in Cuba and her married
life in Baltimore, in whose social doings she took a
prominent part. At her uncle's death, in 1868, she in-
herited Wheatland, where for a number of years she
passed her summers. In 1892 she bought a home in
Washington, where she now spends the greater part of

her time.

Much has been given her of life's joys and triumphs,
and much, too, of its sorrows. Death has repeatedly
crossed the threshold of her home, robbing her, one by
one, of her heart's treasures: in 1881 the elder of her
two sons, James Buchanan Johnston, a boy of brilliant
promise, then in his fourteenth year; in 1882 her second
son, Henry Elliott Johnston ; and two years later her
husband. Surrounded not only by life's comforts, but
its elegancies, by friends of her own and a succeeding
generation, there is yet about Harriet Lane Johnston
to-day much of that same majestic isolation that marked
her youth.

174

ADELE CUTTS

(mRS. ROBERT WILLIAMs)

DURING the four years that Franklin Pierce pre-
sided over the nation so many beautiful women
came prominently before the public at the
capital that his was called the " beauty administra-
tion." Many were the wives and daughters of men in
high official position, but the fame of none exceeded
that of the daughter of James Madison Cutts, who
held the office of Second Controller of the Treasury.

Born within a stone's throw of the White House,
all her young days centred about it, and how near she
came to living there as the wife of a President we
may gauge by how near Stephen A. Douglas came to
possessing that office. Adele Cutts flourished in that
truly golden era before material wealth became a neces-
sary adjunct to a woman's popularity, when men were
distinguished by a greater spirit of gallantry and disin-
terestedness, and in the days before a belle's powers at a
watering-place were rated by the number or size of the
trunks she took with her ; in a word, in the days when
the woman herself was pre-eminent and the accident
of worldly possessions secondary.

It was recently said of a wealthy American girl, who,
though she has generously expended much of her

175

FAMOUS AMERICAN BELLES

large fortune in the endowment of seats of learning
and similar public benefactions, has yet in herself none
of that magnetism that would entitle her to enrolment
among the great belles of her country, " Yes, she is a
great belle this summer. She brought thirty trunks,
and she dresses six times a day." At the same resort
forty years ago, Adele Cutts, remarkable for the sim-
plicity of her toilettes even among a generation that
had no conception whatever of the elaborate costuming
of women which marks the close of the century, was
the most renowned of its belles.

While she derived in the preUminary stages of her
social career some prestige from her connection with
two of the most illustrious families not only of
Virginia but of the entire country, — Washington
and Madison, — she attained while yet a very young
woman a pre-eminence by reason of her beauty, the
distinction of her bearing, and a genuine loveliness of
character, which reflected as much honor upon the
somewhat remote relationship as it had bestowed upon
her. She was born in the home of her grandfather,
Richard Cutts, who, in the days when Maine was part
of Massachusetts, had for twelve years represented in
the Congress of the United States that district which
at this end of the century was for so long a period
associated with the name of Thomas B. Reed.

In 1804 Richard Cutts married Anna Payne, the
youngest sister of the famous Dolly Payne, who some
years before had become the wife of James Madison.
Still another sister had married George Steptoe Wash-

176

ADELE CUTTS

ington, the nephew of our first President. It was of
her sister Anna's family that Mistress Dolly wrote her
lines adapted from John Gilpin's ride :

" My sister Cutts and Cutts and I and Cutts's children three
Will fill the coach, so you must ride on horseback after we."

The home Cutts built for his bride, and where his
children and grandchildren were born, was in those
early days one of the pretentious houses of the capital.
It overlooked Lafayette Square, and its beautiful garden,
where Addie Cutts played as a little girl, skirted along
H street to the end of the block. Cutts was a wid-
ower when his son James Madison married Miss Ellen
O'Neale, of Maryland, and took her to " Montpeher"
to spend their honeymoon days with his aunt and
uncle, whose namesake he was. On their return to
Washington his bride became the mistress of her father-
in-law's home, where in the following year, 1835, Adele
Cutts was born.

In the guise of a little flower-girl she made her first
formal appearance at the White House when she was
but seven years old, at a children's fancy ball given
there in 1842 during the administration of President
Tyler.

She was for the most part educated at Madame Burr's
school, in the city in which she was born. Her won-
derful grace of manner, however, was not the result of
education ; it was the manifestation of a character beau-
tiful by nature and developed amid happy surround-
ings. An only daughter, she was the close companion
12 177

FAMOUS AMERICAN BELLES

of her beautiful and brilliant mother, besides spending
much of her time until her fifteenth year with her
great-aunt Madison, whose genius had sown the first
seeds of social life in the barren wastes of the national
capital and drawn together the scattered elements of
its subsequent levees and dinner-parties. After the
death of Madison, finding herself unable to support
the solitude of her life at " MontpeHer," which had
been theretofore most complete and happy, she returned
to Washington and took up her home in the Cutts
house, which now belonged to her and which bears her
name to this day, though it has had many other dis-
tinguished occupants. Richard Cutts had mortgaged
it to Madison, and dying before he had repaid him,
the house passed into the possession of Mrs. Madison.
There she held a court as brilliant as any ever presided
over by an American woman, and Adele Cutts was
early familiarized with the greatness of a generation
that was already passing away. Webster, Clay, Cal-
houn, as well as every President of the United States
whose term of office fell during her residence in
Washington, paid her the tribute of frequent visits,
and felt honored by his privilege to do so.

At the time of her death her great-niece was four-
teen years old, and already possessed a beauty of the
purest Greek type, whose stateliness increased as she ad-
vanced towards womanhood. The faultless outline of
her profile, the shapeliness of her head, her large, dark
eyes, her chestnut hair that showed glints of a golden

hue in the sunshine, the creamy tone of her skin, the per-

178

Adele Cutts

(Mrs. Robert Williams)

From portrait by George Peter A. Healj-

ADELE CUTTS

feet proportion and development of her tall figure, all
combined to make the rare beauty of a personality
whose charm was augmented twofold by her own un-
consciousness of its rich possessions.

Like many girls of southern proclivities, she spent
her summers at that famous old resort that has wit-
nessed the rising and going down of so many social
stars, the White Sulphur Springs. There, dressed al-
ways in white, with a white kerchief in the mornings
folded across her bosom and showing her fair throat,
there was about her a freshness and simplicity that sug-
gested her descent from the Quaker Paynes.

The spirit of gallantry has no age limit in the South,
and she, like many another girl in the blossom of her
youth, received the homage of men of all periods of
life. The beautiful Imogene Penn, afterwards Mrs.
James Lyons, of Richmond, and whose belleship days
were contemporaneous with those of Adele Cutts, en-
countered the irrepressible Richmond wag, Tom Au-
gust, one morning as she was returning from the spring-
house between two devotees, one of whom was the
unsuspected possessor of forty-five, while the other con-
cealed about his person as many as fifty summers. " I
thought. Miss Imogene," said August, bowing pro-
foundly to the trio and availing himself of a wit's
privilege, " that you were just eighteen, but I see you
are between forty-five and fifty."

Some Virginia beaux, who were young then, have

treasured up and still relate an anecdote of the manner

in which one of Adele Cutts's elderly admirers lost the

179

FAMOUS AMERICAN BELLES

only opportunity she ever gave him to propose to her.
He came from New Orleans, and was blessed with many
good things, including sons and daughters older than
Miss Cutts. At a fancy-dress ball she appeared com-
pletely disguised in the character of a housekeeper,
having borrowed the entire costume, including the cap,
. apron, and bunch of keys at her side, from the house-
keeper of the hotel. Before any one had had an oppor-
tunity to speculate on her identity, discovering her old
admirer among the spectators of the gay and bewilder-
ing scene, she approached demurely and asked him if
he did not need a housekeeper. He parried the ques-
tion somewhat playfully, and ended by answering in the
negative. She dropped him a courtesy with a grace
no housekeeper could emulate, peeping at him with
laughing eyes over her mask, and disappeared in the
throng of the ball-room.

At a White House reception, early in the winter of
1856, she met Stephen A. Douglas, who was then promi-
nent as a Presidential possibility ; he was also one of
the Illinois Senators, and his ringing speeches had won
him a national fame equal to the intensity of his local
popularity. His able defence of Andrew Jackson on
the floor of the Senate so gratified and touched the old
President that he preserved a copy of the speech, laying
it aside as an inheritance for those who should come
after him, and endorsing it as a defence of himself and
his administration. The one great fault of that ad-
ministration, in his own estimation, was none of those

for which popular opinion of his day condemned him,

180

ADELE CUTTS

but that he had not hanged Calhoun. "Douglas,"
writes one of his biographers, " had wonderfully mag-
netic powers, and usually carried his audience with him."
It is small wonder, then, that at the end of a few months
of ardent and eloquent debate, with an audience con-
sisting of one young girl, that he should have carried
her completely with him.

He was a widower with two sons when he met
Adele Cutts, and, like many a less fortunate man, he was
instantly impressed with her absolute loveliness. He
would go to her direct from the Senate chamber while
the whole city was ringing with the fame of his speeches,
which she not infrequently heard from a place in the
gallery, and throw all his irresistible eloquence into his
courtship of her.

In the Democratic Convention of the summer of
1856 Douglas and Buchanan were rival candidates for
the Presidential nomination. Pierce, also, though there
had been some doubt in the minds of his own towns-
men about his making a successful President at all,
was seeking the nomination for a second term. " Frank
Pierce is all very well up here where he knows every-
body and everybody knows Frank Pierce," said a New
Hampshire sage during the summer preceding Pierce's
election, " but when it comes to spreading him out over
the whole country, I'm afraid he'll be mighty thin in
some places." The thinness had evidently been ap-
parent, for while he had the high honor of coming in
almost unanimously, as Senator Benton said, he went

out with as great a unanimity.

181

FAMOUS AMERICAN BELLES

When it became evident that the nomination was
not for Douglas, so intensely was he beloved by the
people of the West, and particularly by those of his
own State, that many a sturdy, hard-featured delegate
from that section, to all appearances the embodiment
of stoicism, put down his head and wept like a little
heart-broken child.

On the 20th of November, a few weeks after the
election of Buchanan, he was married to Adele Cutts,
and it has been said that, of the many beautiful women
who witnessed the incoming of Buchanan's administra-
tion at his inaugural ball, Douglas's wife was the most
beautiful.

Already known to the South and the East, her fame
now spread westward, and when it was rumored that
Douglas would take her to Chicago, where he had
maintained a legal residence for some years, the people
of the town made ready to receive her with the en-
thusiasm which she inspired in them then primarily as
the young wife of Stephen A. Douglas. She made her
first appearance among them at St. Mary's Church,
where many people who had never been in a Catholic
church before were found in the congregation that
Sunday morning, and far more than the usual external
contingent waited patiently on the sidewalk to see her
as she came out. When she appeared with her hus-
band at the celebration held on the State line between
Illinois and Wisconsin, in honor of the union of the
two railroad companies between Chicago and Mil-
waukee, she was hailed with uproarious cheers. There

182

ADELE CUTTS

was that in her very presence which seemed to com-
pletely satisfy every man's ideal of all womanly per-
fection.

It was in the year of the great contest for the Legisla-
ture between Lincoln and Douglas that the people of
the West came to know her, however, as she was already
known at the East, and to love her with that same
loyalty and devotion. Her home in Chicago was
always in hotels, sometimes at the Tremont House and
again at the Lake View. Many of the men who have
made Chicago the queen city she is to-day were then
young. Among them were professional men and men
full of commercial enterprise, all brainy and ambi-
tious, and a fair number of them Democrats and fol-
lowers of Douglas. These gathered about her in her
parlors or under the trees in the garden overlooking
the lake, and though she never entered into any political
discussion, the very fact that Douglas possessed such a
wife inspired them with renewed ardor for his cause.
In her gentle graciousness, infinite tact, and entire un-
consciousness of the admiration she everywhere aroused,
they felt the full force of her high breeding.

Lincoln and Douglas are so conspicuously identified
as political enemies, that few people reaUze that per-
sonally they were friends. Not unfrequently they
travelled a whole day together only to take the plat-
form that night against each other and to pommel each
other, figuratively, out of recognition. Douglas was
adroit, however, and Lincoln once said of him that it
was difficult to get the best of him in any debate, be-

183

FAMOUS AMERICAN BELLES

cause his power of bewildering his audience was so
great that they never knew when he was worsted.
During the summer in which their poHtical enmity
first achieved so much prominence, Douglas's wife went
with him through the State winning favor for him in all
eyes, even including those of the " ablest whig rascal in
all Springfield, Abe Lincoln." He liked to sit beside
her as they journeyed from place to place and pour some
funny story into her attentive ears, or, perhaps, divining
the tender sympathy of her true woman's soul, tell her
some incident of his early days, touching off its sorrow-
ful details with a bit of homely philosophy or a stroke
of his inexhaustible humor ; and as the train pulled into
some expectant town, and the two opponents were
greeted by factions whose enmity was real, he would
say, " Here, Douglas, take your woman," and so they
would part to meet again as foes. As the final victory
was with Douglas, he and his wife made that tour of the
Southern States that was much in the nature of a tri-
umphal procession, and was a forerunner of his Presi-
dential campaign which shortly followed.

His real home was in Washington, where as a Sena-
tor he spent the greater portion of each year. There
he built a commodious house, with a ball-room, by no
means a frequent adjunct at that time, which witnessed
much generous hospitality in those difficult days pre-
ceding secession, when a woman like Mrs. Douglas
could best hold warring elements in abeyance.

The result of the campaign of the summer of i860,
in which Lincoln and Douglas again confronted each

184

ADELE CUTTS

other, this time for the higher prize of the Presidency,
precipitated that crisis which at length brought these
two hfe-long opponents together in defence of the
Union. The whole aim of Douglas's life had been for
the Presidency. He had accomplished all else he had
ever set his heart upon, and he was so absolutely the
idol of the people that it had not seemed possible to
him he should fail here. He swallowed the bitterness
of his disappointment heroically, however, and was a
generous and even a graceful friend to Lincoln.

It is related that, when Lincoln rose to read his in-
augural address, he hesitated a moment, uncertain as to
what disposition to make of his hat ; it was a new, high
silk hat, too elegant an acquisition to the mind of one
reared in the more than frugal atmosphere of Lincoln's
home to be intrusted to the pine boards of the flag-
draped stand in front of him. Douglas, divining the
mental process of which Lincoln himself, in the em-
barrassment of the moment, was scarcely conscious,
stepped forward and relieved him of the hat, holding it
for him till the conclusion of the address.

During the early days of the conflict between the
North and the South, which he had patriotically done
his utmost to avert, he aided Lincoln with able counsel,
pointing out to him among other things the necessity
of securing Fortress Monroe and cautioning him against
bringing the troops through Baltimore, prophesying that
bloodshed that did occur. But before the conflict had
assumed those proportions which it did later in the same
year, on the 3d of June, 1861, Douglas's life closed.

185

FAMOUS AMERICAN BELLES

His last hours were spent in Chicago among the people
he had so ably represented. There, with his wife beside
him, and her mother and brother, James Madison Cutts,
who was his private secretary, near by, and with his keen,
dark eyes upon her face, as if he would forever fix upon
his spirit its beautiful hneaments, and his hand in hers,
his mind retaining all its strength and clearness till the
end, he uttered his last memorable words. She had
asked him if he had any message to send to his sons,
and he replied, " Tell them to obey the laws of the
land and to support the Constitution of the United
States."

Generous even to the point of recklessness, he died
poor. Subscriptions were immediately begun among
his friends towards a fund for his widow. She declined,
however, to receive it, and begged that the sum thus
raised be devoted to the erection of a monum.ent to
Douglas's memory.

She returned to Washington and lived quietly for
some years in the first home of her married life, taking
no part in the social world whose magnet she had
been for so many seasons. But she was not forgotten ;
and when she again, after four years of seclusion, re-
sumed her place in its midst, her reappearance brought
up innumerable memories of her earlier days, of her
conquest of the " Little Giant," and of her queenly
part in his political campaigns.

She was the guest of honor at a dinner given in the
early winter of 1865, just as the war drew to its close,
by Miss Harris, whose name lives in history in a very

186

ADELE CUTTS

different connection : she was sitting beside Lincoln in
his box at the theatre on the night he was shot. Among
the guests bidden to meet Mrs. Douglas was Captain,
afterwards General, Robert Williams, one of the hand-
somest and most gallant officers of the army, and a
member of a well-established family of Culpeper County,
Virginia. Mrs. Douglas was already known to him by
fame, and suspecting her to be possessed of all the
caprices of a spoiled beauty, he had no desire whatever
to meet her, though he accepted Miss Harris's invita-
tion for the sake of the pleasure he would otherwise
derive from her hospitality. After he had been pre-
sented to Mrs. Douglas, however, whatever enjoyment
he had anticipated from meeting others there passed
from his mind. Combined with a gentle dignity, there
was about her all the sweet simplicity of a young girl,
and nothing that ever so remotely suggested any con-
sciousness of a fame that was as wide as her country.
He followed her with all the earnestness with which
he had meant to avoid her, and in January, 1866, she
again became a bride.

The chronicle of the most magnificent ball ever
given, not only in Washington, but probably in the
country, and which occurred shortly after her marriage
to General Williams, hands her name and that of Kate
Chase Sprague down to fame as the two most beauti-
ful women who participated in the brilliant event. It
was given by the French minister. Count de Mouth o-
lon, by order of his Emperor, in honor of the officers
of the French fleet then anchored at Annapolis.

187

FAMOUS AMERICAN BELLES

She gradually, however, abdicated her social queen-
ship for a crown she wore with no less grace, that of a
most noble motherhood.

Wedded to an army man, her life led her from post to
post, and the greater part of her days from that time
was spent in the West.

The little life of the only child of her first marriage
covered but a few months. The six children of her
second marriage, however, are all living and grown to
manhood and womanhood, two of her sons being in
the military service of their country.

The last few years of her life were passed in Wash-
ington, where her husband held the office of Ad-
jutant-General until his retirement from the service.
There her eldest daughter was married, in January, 1899,
to Lieutenant John Bryson Patton, and there also, on
the 26th of the same month, her own life terminated.
Time had touched her lightly, as if he would not rob
her of a loveliness that had been as much a charm to
women as to men. Asked once the secret of her
youthful appearance, she blushed like a girl and con-
fessed that she was happy, and that therein must lie the
solution.

It is difficult to analyze the qualities of that power
of fascination which some women have exercised over
the world. They are as varied as the individuality of
the women to whom they have been intrusted. In
Adele Cutts, however, they seem to have emanated
from a singular beauty of soul, a species of primal in-
nocence that proclaimed itself at once to the sense of

188

ADELE CUTTS

every beholder and preserved her alike from any touch
of vanity or worldliness.

To those who knew her she seemed little changed
as the years rolled on, because to her classic beauty of
form was added an indestructible quality which was a
beauty of the spirit.

189

EMILIE SCHAUMBURG

(mrs. hughes-hallett)

EVERY Philadelphia girl who has hoped to be a
belle during this last quarter of the century, and
even many who have been without social aspi-
rations, have been brought up on traditions of Emilie
Schaumburg.

Yet so eminent was the place she held in the old
city whose standard of belleship had been fixed far
back in the colonial days of America, that no one
has ever succeeded her.

Accustomed through long generations to women of
wit, beauty, and a certain unapproachable taste in mat-
ters of personal adornment, Philadelphia has developed
a critical instinct which is not easily satisfied

" The ladies of Philadelphia," wrote Miss Rebecca
Franks over a century ago, " have more cleverness in
the turn of an eye than those of New York have in
their whole composition. With what ease have I seen
a Chew, a Penn, an Oswald, or an Allen, and a thou-
sand others, entertain a large circle of both sexes ; the
conversation, without the aid of cards, never flagging
nor seeming in the least strained or stupid. Here, in
New York, you enter the room with a formal set cour-
tesy, and, after the how-dos, things are finished ; all is

190

EMILIE SCHAUMBURG

dead calm till the cards are introduced, when you see
pleasure dancing in the eyes of all the matrons, and
they seem to gain new life."

It is but just to state that this fair critic of New
York's social status belonged to Philadelphia, where,
though her wit was rather of a satirical turn, she was
noted as a lady possessed of " every human and divine
advantage." She was the youngest of the three daugh-
ters of David Franks, one of whom became the wife of
Oliver de Lancey, another of Andrew Hamilton, of
" Woodlands," one of the famous suburban estates of
the city, while Rebecca, " high in toryism and eccen-
tricity," after an unusually brilliant belleship, bestowed
her hand on Lieutenant-General Sir Henry Johnston,
and went to live in England.

Of the Chews referred to in her letter from New
York, so sparkling was the conversation which Harriet
could maintain, that Washington, when he was sitting
for his portrait to Stuart, liked to have her in the room
that his face might wear its most agreeable expression,
such as her wit always induced. She married the son
of Charles Carroll of Carrollton, the young Charles
Carroll who was at one time suspected of having a
tender interest in Nellie Custis, Washington's step-
granddaughter. Her sister Margaret, who was one of
the beauties who made the great feast of the Mischi-
anza so famous, also married a son of Maryland, Colo-
nel John Eager Howard, a patriot and a hero. Pass-
ing through her room one evening he heard her relating

to her children the pathetic story of Major Andre,

191

FAMOUS AMERICAN BELLES

who had been her knight in the tournament of the
Mischianza.

" Don't believe a word of it, children," he interrupted,
as their young hearts swelled with pity at her graphic
and romantic recital ; " he was an infernal spy."

Ann Willing, who married William Bingham in her
seventeenth year, was another woman who helped to
establish the standard of female beauty and excellence
in Philadelphia. " She is coming quite into fashion
here," John Adams's daughter wrote of her from Lon-
don, " and is very much admired. The hair-dresser
who dresses us on court days inquired of mamma
whether she knew the lady so much talked of here
from America, Mrs. Bingham. He had heard of her
from a lady who had seen her at Lord Duncan's."

London society, and especially that of the court
circle, was not very favorably disposed towards Ameri-
cans in the year 1786, and the subsequent graciousness
of their reception they doubtless owed largely to the
impression created by the beauty and character of such
a woman as Mrs. Bingham, who was one of the first to
seek a presentation at the court of George IIL after
our separation from the mother-country. Her striking
beauty of face and form, her easy deportment, that had
all the pride and grace of high breeding, the intelligence
of her countenance, and the entire affability of her
attitude disarmed every feeling of unfriendliness and
converted every one, said Mrs. Adams, into admiration.

The unfortunate Margaret Shippen, as gifted as she

was beautiful, deprived by her husband's treason before

192

EMILIE SCHAUMBURG

she was twenty years old of the shelter of her home
and the protection of her family, the Executive Coun-
cil of Pennsylvania bidding her to leave the State and
not return till the close of the war, and Sarah, the
daughter of Benjamin Franklin and wife of Richard
Bache, and the embodiment of Republican principles,
which caused her to insist that there was " no rank in
America but rank mutton," are two noted examples of
that diversity which gave flavor to the social life of a
city that has tempted the pens of both native and
foreign critics.

Philadelphia was one of the first of the North-
ern cities to admit women to the pit of its theatres,
and visitors from quiet Boston and commercial New
York at one time condemned its social tone as fast,
because its young men gave wine-suppers, and because
it danced to the music of a full colored orchestra,
known as Johnson's Band, while other cities were per-
forming their more or less graceful gyrations to the
tunes furnished by one or two musicians.

The Quaker town had made a brilliant social record
before many of the cities of America had so much as
laid one stone upon another. By comparison it is old.
It has its elements of newness, like all bodies that grow
and progress, but they are not readily assimilated by
that little coterie that long ago laid the foundation of
its establishment in the southeastern section of the city.
It is from the predominance of this conservative social
principle in Philadelphia that people unfamiliar with its
life have derived the erroneous impression that its gen-
13 193

FAMOUS AMERICAN BELLES

eral progress and development have been correspond-
ingly deliberate.

To hold such a position as Emilie Schaumburg held
in Philadelphia implies the possession of such personal
qualities and such gifts as would be an open door to
the most exclusive society of the world.

She was well born, coming of ancestry distinguished
both in their native land and in that of their adoption.
Her grandfather. Colonel Bartholomew Schaumburg,
belonged to one of the oldest families in Germany.
He was a godson and ward of the Landgrave Frederick
William, with whom he was closely connected. When
still quite a youth, the Landgrave made him an aide-
de-camp to Count Donop, who commanded the Hes-
sian subsidies furnished by Germany to England to aid
her in the war with the American colonies.

Schaumburg was sent with despatches to Donop,
who, however, had been killed before the arrival of his
young aide-de-camp. Learning for the first time of
the righteousness of the American cause, he gallantly
offered his services to the commander-in-chief of the
American forces. He fought valiantly all through the
war, and at its close accepted a commission in the
standing army organized by the new government. At
the Cotton Centennial held at New Orleans in 1884,
his commissions signed by Washington were exhibited
and were objects of much interest. He took part in
many of the early Indian wars, and was appointed
quartermaster-general in the war of 1812.

His home was at New Orleans. His eldest daughter,

194

Kmilie Schaumburg

(Mrs. Hughes-Hallett)

From portrait by Waugh

EMILIE SCHAUMBURG

at the time of General Lafayette's visit to that city,
was one of the twelve young girls selected on account
of their beauty from its most distinguished families to
crown America's friend. She lived to an advanced
age, surviving her eleven companions of that memor-
able occasion and retaining much of her beauty till the
close of her life.

The site of the city of Cincinnati was indirectly
chosen by Colonel Schaumburg when he selected the
spot where it later sprung up for the establishment of a
fort, which he called, in honor of his first American
friend, Fort Washington.

He was an accomplished artillerist, and under his
direction was cast the first cannon made in the United
States. While stationed in Carlisle, Pennsylvania, upon
military duty, he met the lady whom he afterwards
married, and who had not long previously arrived in
America, whither she had come with her parents to
trace a recent acquisition of land.

She was a lineal descendant of the principal Indian
chief, Secaneh, of the Lenape tribe, who signed the
treaty of 1683 with William Penn, selling him the
large tract of land on which Philadelphia is built.

The Princess Susahena, the daughter of Secaneh, had
been married to Thomas Holme McFarlane, a nephew
of Thomas Holme, who was the first Surveyor-General
of Pennsylvania. Three years after their marriage they
sailed for Dublin, but ocean voyages in those days
were trials to the stoutest constitutions, and the poor
princess died before reaching the other side.

19s

FAMOUS AMERICAN BELLES

Her child, a daughter, lived, and it was the great-
granddaughter of this child who became the wife of
Colonel Schaumburg, so that Emilie Schaumburg is the
seventh generation in lineal descent from the aboriginal
princess, and attained her remarkable social queenship
on the native heath of her royal ancestors.

Mrs. Henry D. Gilpin, who had known Colonel
Schaumburg's family intimately and had spent much
time with them in their Southern home, frequently
spoke of the great beauty of Emilie Schaumburg's
grandmother, and of the resemblance Emilie bore to
her. She had the fresh Irish complexion and violet
eyes, together with suggestions of the Indian type of
her ancestry in the tall, lithe figure, delicately aquiline
features, and black hair, which almost swept the ground.

They were a strikingly handsome couple, for Colo-
nel Schaumburg was as magnificent in appearance as
he was conspicuous in courage. He was several inches
over six feet in height, and clung all his life to pow-
dered hair and lace ruffles, those outward signs of the
aristocrat ; yet he adopted republican principles, dropped
his title, and besought his children to be satisfied with
the record he should leave them of services rendered
his adopted country.

He had declined the overtures made him by his

family in Germany, from whom he had become

estranged owing to the course he had pursued in

espousing the American cause. He had no desire to

return and resume his career there.

When his granddaughter, however, visited Germany

196

EMILIE SCHAUMBURG

she was received with marked consideration by the Prin-
cess of Schaumburg-Lippe, who was reigning at the time.

True to his principles, Colonel Schaumburg opposed
the formation of the Society of the Cincinnati, refusing
to become a member of it, and arguing that it had for
its object the inauguration of an aristocracy, and was
in direct opposition to the very principles for which
they had fought.

His son followed in his footsteps in selecting a mili-
tary career. He was graduated from the National
Military Academy in 1833, ^^^ entered the cavalry.
He was a gallant officer, generous and impetuous, and
as magnificent in physique as his father.

He lost his commission through a technicality which
the War Department turned to his disadvantage, and
fought all his life for reinstatement, being upheld by
President Jackson and a majority of the United States
Senate.

He had imbibed his father's ideas, and would never
use the "von" in his name because his father had
dropped it. When his daughter wished to resume it,
however, he gave his consent and approval.

Major Schaumburg married a daughter of Stephen
Page, originally of Page County, Virginia, and later of
Eden Park, a beautiful country-seat, near Philadelphia,
where his children were born. Miss Page, who became
Mrs. Schaumburg, was a woman of much beauty and
many accomplishments, which she transmitted to her
daughter.

Emilie von Schaumburg grew up in the home of her

197

FAMOUS AMERICAN BELLES

uncle, Colonel James Page, with whom her name is
ever identified. Though he was a man of social and
political prominence, his greatest distinction, in the eyes
of his fellow-citizens, arose from his relationship to her.

When this new fame dawned upon him, he had been
for nearly fifty years a well-known and popular figure
in the life of the city. His military record had been
made in his youth during the war of 1812. He had
been Postmaster and Collector of the Port of Philadel-
phia, a leader in Councils, County Treasurer in an era
when politics had gone hand in hand with principle and
patriotism. He was a Jacksonian Democrat, and had
come to be looked upon as the grand old man of his
party, who by birth and breeding could adorn a ball at
Madam Rush's or make an after-dinner speech with as
ready a grace as he could march at the head of the
State Fencibles.

In no capacity, however, did he attract that peculiar
interest that pursued him whenever he appeared in
public with his niece. On winter afternoons, at a time
when that season was rather longer in the Middle States
than it is at the close of the century, and when the
waters of the rivers used to remain fast frozen for many
days they frequently appeared among the skaters, of
whom, in his youth. Colonel Page had been one of the
celebrities. He found new enthusiasm in the graceful
sport, however, from the admiration he read in all faces
whenever he went upon the ice with his niece.

They formed a picture that many paused to look
upon, while others, who knew nothing of the intrica-

198

EMILIE SCHAUMBURG

cles of the accomplishment, gathered on the river-bank
solely for the pleasure of watching them as they took
those wonderfully long, sweeping curves of the " outer
edge," the lithe figure of the girl seeming to float like a
bird on the wing, while the splendid poise of the hand-
some, vigorous old man was as erect, as easy, and as
firm as in his youth. He always held that the highest
art in skating was in perfecting, to an almost incredible
degree, the delicate balance of the body on the outer
edge of the skate, and so broadening and lengthening
the curves, which are ever, according to Hogarth, the
lines of beauty. The result justified the theory, and
he found an apt pupil in his niece, whose skating, like
her dancing, was the very poetry of motion.

The beauty of some women admits of a diversity of
opinion. Emilie von Schaumburg's did not. It was
absolute, and the effect was instantaneous. A head
of classic mould, with its rich adornment of lus-
trous black hair, proudly poised upon a throat and
shoulders of perfect form; an oval face, lighted with a
fine vivacity and captivating smile ; great hazel eyes
with dark brows and sweeping lashes ; delicate, regular
features, and a complexion which no art could imitate
in its transparent fairness and brilliancy ; a figure, tall
and svelt, all undulating lines and willowy grace ; a
regal carriage, and, above all, an air of high-bred ele-
gance and distinction ; such, in- her early girlhood, was
Emilie von Schaumburg, whom the Prince of Wales
declared the most beautiful woman he had seen in

America.

199

FAMOUS AMERICAN BELLES

It was on that famous night when the visit of His
Royal Highness to the Academy of Music brought
thither one of the most distinguished audiences ever
assembled in Philadelphia. She was dressed with girl-
ish simplicity in white, her only ornament being a small
chain of golden sequins, which bound the rich masses
of her hair and defined her shapely head, yet such was
the subtle power of her presence, that from the moment
she entered that crowded assembly, with its tier upon
tier of brilliantly arrayed women, she became the focus
of all eyes, dividing the attention of the Prince of
Wales and the audience with Patti, who was pouring
out her soul in matchless melody upon the stage.

One night, a few years ago, during a performance of
Madame Bernhardt, in Philadelphia, a woman occupy-
ing one of the boxes, and carrying herself with that
fine spirit that had been the glory of a previous gener-
ation, was recognized as Emilie Schaumburg, for so she
still is, and forever will be known, among the people
of her own city and country.

The discovery flew from mouth to mouth, and many
who had never before seen her, as well as those who
looked upon her for the first time after many years, and
recalled that memorable night at the Academy of
Music, bent upon her a gaze of unmistakable admiration.

Her education was principally directed by Hon.
Henry Gilpin, who was the Attorney-General of Van
Buren's administration, and a most finished scholar.

To the many advantages she enjoyed in having

access to his library she subsequently added a thor-

200

EMILIE SCHAUMBURG

ough knowledge of several modern languages, for her
intellectual endowments were in no degree inferior to
her physical gifts. Though she had a fine artistic sense
and an almost incredible facility in the acquirement
of knowledge, she yet early recognized the necessity of
serious study and intelligent application.

In this recognition and the ability to comply with
its requirements, perhaps, more than in any other
thing, lies the vast difference between the mere butter-
fly of society and the woman who leaves the impress
of her individuality upon the life in which she moves.

Emilie Schaumburg never attempted a thing for
which she had no special talent, but, having once un-
dertaken a study, she pursued it with enthusiasmi, fol-
lowing its every detail to the limit of her capacity. To
an admirer, who once exclaimed, " Is there anything
in the world you cannot do, and do brilliantly ?" she
replied, " Yes : I was a dismal failure at both sewing
and arithmetic."

Her voice, in speaking as in singing, lent itself to
every delicate inflection. She would delight, when still
a very young child, to imitate. Each new song she
caught with an unerring ear, the florid passages, rou-
lades, and trills flowing as easily and naturally from the
childish throat as from that of a bird. This marvel-
lously flexible quality of voice she has never lost. In
speaking of her musical education, she once said to a
friend, —

" I have had to study phrasing and style and ex-
pression, with sostenuto, crescendo, diminuendo, and

20I

FAMOUS AMERICAN BELLES

various other artistic effects, but the drudgery of exer-
cises was spared me, thanks to my fairy godmother."

She has always retained her habits of study, and
even during her first brilliant season in Paris she found
time to take lessons from Madame La Grange and also
from the celebrated teacher Delle Sedie. Later, how-
ever, at Nice, she studied more consecutively with
Maestro Gelli, who recognized the unusual order of her
talents and wrote several beautiful morceaux expressly
for her.

Her beauty and accomplishments were the open
sesame to the exclusive circles of the villa society at
Nice, and among the many distinguished people whom
she delighted with her rare gifts was the late lamented
Duke of Albany. Like most of the royal family of
England, he was an accomplished critic and an ardent
lover of music. He was enthusiastic in his praise of
Miss von Schaumburg's singing, and when she again
met him, a year or two later, at a court-ball at Buck-
ingham Palace, his greeting proved that he had not
forgotten the impression it had made upon him. His
first words were, " And how is the beautiful voice V

Before she left Philadelphia her histrionic talents had
perhaps made her more widely known than any other
of her many accomplishments. During the war for
the Union, when the stage was the means of raising
many dollars for the benefit of the wounded and suf-
fering sofdiers, she was foremost among the bright and
spirited society women who devoted their talents to the

cause.

202

EMILIE SCHAUMBURG

Her dramatic success was due neither to her beauty
nor to her personal charm, though her expressive features,
her voice, and her perfect grace and ease were undoubt-
edly powerful adjuncts. Her triumphs were legitimate,
and were the result of careful study, artistic finish, and
unusual histrionic ability. That she possessed, in an
extraordinary degree, the power of getting out of her-
self and into her parts was evidenced by the tribute
contained in the criticism of some friends who went to
see her in " Masks and Faces." They had gone, they
said, solely to see Miss Schaumburg, whom, however,
they soon forgot, their interest becoming absorbed in
the brilliant, fascinating, impulsive Peg.

Yet Emilie Schaumburg was a very young girl when
she stepped upon the amateur stage of the Seventeenth-
Street Drawing-Room, and had never had a lesson in
declamation nor a suggestion from any one to help her
in the study of her parts. To be able to forget one's
identity, and to make one's audience forget it, is, after
all, the acme of high art in acting, or, rather, it is the
touch of genius which is above art, since it can not be
taught.

As Peg Woffington in " Masks and Faces," and as
the Countess in the " Ladies' Battle," she carried con-
servative and critical audiences by storm. Ristori, who
was present at one of the performances, expressed un-
qualified admiration at the high order of Miss Schaum-
burg's talent, for both roles are considered tests to
trained actresses.

She scored another success in the Httle operetta,

203

FAMOUS AMERICAN BELLES

" Les Noces de Jeannette," which she sang and acted in
French, and in which the piece de resistance is the great
air du rossignol. There are many people in Philadel-
phia to-day who yet recall the brilliancy and daring of
those tours deforces between the voice and the flute,
each one in turn taking up the refrain and soaring
higher and higher in imitation of the nightingale ; yet
there was never a harsh or strained note in her perfect
voice, but all as liquid, pure, and full-throated as the
warbling of the veritable bird.

Another of the gifts she possessed was for versifica-
tion. She brought it into frequent and graceful play,
but only for the enjoyment of those who were admitted
to the privilege of an intimate friendship with her.

It is little wonder that Emilie von Schaumburg
should have made an impress upon the city of her
nativity which has remained proof against time and
absence. No woman ever won a more spontaneous
admiration than fell to her lot. She never appeared
upon the streets that she was not surrounded and fol-
lowed by both men and women, who, frequently with-
out knowing her, came simply to look upon her beauty
and glory in her possession.

She married, in England, Colonel Hughes-Hallett,
of the Royal Artillery, and member of Parliament for
Rochester. She resides now during the greater part of
the year at Dinard, in France, where she built, some
years ago, the beautiful chateau of Montplaisir.

Still a strikingly handsome and distinguished woman,
she gathers about her the aristocracy of both France

204

EMILIE SCHAUMBURG

and England as well as the most eminent and charm-
ing of her compatriots. She entertains during each
season with that same graciousness of hospitality with
which she once presided in her uncle's home in Phila-
delphia.

She recently added a ball-room to Monplaisir which
she inaugurated by a series of concerts and balls, among
the picturesque features of the latter being minuets,
gavottes, and a cotillon.

Gowned in a white and silver brocade Watteau, with
panniers, over a pink satin petticoat trimmed with
flounces of old lace, headed with wreaths of roses of
a deeper pink, her powdered hair crowned with a black
Gainsborough hat with black, white, and pink plumes,
Mrs. Hughes-Hallett took part in one of the stately
gavottes, making a beautiful picture against the deli-
cate blue background and Louis Quinze decorations of
her artistic ball-room.

A life filled with adulation, that would have been
the undoing of a less wise woman, has in no way im-
paired her charm of character. Her fine mental poise,
her exquisite humor, together with the generosity and
sweetness of her nature, have preserved her from that
calamitous sense of satiety that has overtaken many a
man and many a woman who have lost their balance
completely in an altitude of admiration much below
that in which Emilie von Schaumburg has passed her
life.

205

KATE CHASE

(mRS. WILLIAM SPRAGUe)

THERE was a name in America a little more than
a generation ago that possessed a power amount-
ing almost to enchantment, the name of Kate
Chase, a woman who holds a unique place in both the
political and social history of this century. The story
of her life, between the high lights of its early days
and the shadows in which it closed, presents a peculiar
succession of superlatives. There stands forth, how-
ever, through all its changes, one unvarying dominant
feature which must strike us at once, whether we ap-
proach it in the spirit of a student or actuated merely
by a passing curiosity : her absolute devotion to her
father. Through our knowledge of him, therefore, we
may, in a measure, penetrate those mists in which she
is enveloped by the divided opinion of a public, some
of whom loved and idealized her as a social divinity,
while others hated and maligned her as an opposing
political force. Thus may we reach some just valuation
of a character that with its man's virility and woman's
delicacy was in itself singularly enigmatical, of its in-
centives and ideals, and, indirectly, therefore, of the
failure and disappointments which have left their in-
delible stamp upon the Hfe of Kate Chase.

In her father, profoundly cultured and endowed with

206

KATE CHASE

inexhaustible intellectual resources, she found the com-
plete realization of her most exalted conception. She
well knew the tenderness of the heart, the sensitiveness
of the nature, he carried beneath that superb exterior of
majestic and unapproachable dignity. She lived in close
communion with the man, the angry rebuke of whose
eye, says one of his biographers, no transgressor could
support. She was the central feature of his remarkable
home. Upon both of his daughters he expended a
tenderness of devotion of which those who lived beyond
the sphere of a personal acquaintance with him had no
conception. Yet there have been inconspicuous women
whom he might have fathered with more ultimate hap-
piness to themselves than the remarkable daughter who
is the subject of this sketch. Though he was a great
man, winning justifiable distinction in every branch of
the government of his country, he was yet not compe-
tent to cope with the problems which the life of such a
woman as Kate Chase was continually presenting. In
her presence alone, in the proud carriage of her regal
head, there was that singular power that, while it drew
forth the love and admiration that are the expression
of a generous nature, likewise provoked in those of a
baser order a hideous envy and hatred that assailed her
even as a young girl. With his benignant behef in
the universal goodness of mankind. Chase was sin-
gularly deficient in that knowledge of human nature
which should have enabled him to throw about her
that sort of aggressive protection which she peculiarly

required.

207

FAMOUS AMERICAN BELLES

There Is one little incident in his life that throws
light upon his own character, and upon the principle he
pursued in directing his daughter. He was a man of
the most delicate tastes and with a high appreciation of
all the niceties of life. When he took the platform
as an abolitionist, he was rotten-egged. Removing as
much as possible of the offensive effusion with his
handkerchief, he continued with what he was saying.
He made no modification in his statements, nor did he
close the window through which the unsavory missiles
had made their entrance. As far as possible he ignored
the occurrence.

The scandal-monger he treated with the same silent
scorn, continuing the tenor of his life as if he had not
been made aware of his existence. But while he, a
courageous man, might walk fearlessly amid the storm
of the angry nation that impeached Andrew Johnson,
and, regardless of its threats, discharge the duties of his
high office with that calmness that distinguished all the
acts of his judicial career and adds to the glory of his
name in the eyes of a later generation, his daughter,
though no less courageous, was yet " too slight a thing"
to defy the gossips of even one Western town. " Ah !
little woman," she once said, laying her hand on the
shoulder of one of her loyal friends to whom sorrow
had come, " you, at least, have never made the mistake
that I made. I never cared for the opinion or good-
will of people. I ran my head against a stone wall.
It did not hurt the wall but it has hurt the head." This
is perhaps the nearest approach to self-justification she

208

KATE CHASE

ever made for having essayed, with a man's indepen-
dence, to Hve that most circumscribed life of a conspic-
uously beautiful woman.

Losing her own mother when she was scarcely beyond
her infancy, and her step-mother before she had reached
v/omanhood, and realizing early that she was treated in
all things as his equal in years and understanding by the
man whose superiority among his fellow-men she con-
ceived to be beyond question, that spirit of self-reliance
that is the natural outcome of all positive characters
was intensified in her to an abnormal degree. While it
gave her the fundamental qualifications of that leader-
ship which she maintained with unparalleled brilliancy,
it likewise, through lack of direction, developed that
imperious tendency that proved so fatal to her own
happiness.

She was the first child of Chase's marriage to his
second wife, Eliza Ann Smith, and was named by her
mother after his first wife, Katherine Garniss, for whom
she had had a tender friendship and sincere admiration.

Of her birth, which occurred on the 1 3th of August,
1 840, her father's journal contains the following record,
a characteristic statement of the event from a God-fear-
ing man whose knowledge, not only of children, but
of the human family in general, was largely drawn
from "judicious treatises."

" I went apart, and kneeling down prayed God to

support and comfort my dear wife, to preserve the life

of the child, and save both from sin. I endeavored to

give up the child and all into His hands. After a while
14 209

FAMOUS AMERICAN BELLES

I went into the room. The birth had taken place at 2
A.M. on the 13th. After I had seen my wife and child,
I went into the library and read a few pages in Eber's
book on children, a judicious treatise. At last I became
tired, and, though it was now day, lay down and slept
awhile. The babe is pronounced pretty. I think it
quite otherwise. It is, however, well formed, and I am
thankful. May God give the child a good understand-
ing that she may know and keep his commandments."

Of the early age at which Chase elected to test that
understanding, his journal also furnishes an evidence.
An entry therein, under date of November 24, 1845,
about two months after her mother's death, shows the
dawn of that remarkable intellectual intercourse which
he maintained with his daughter till the end of his life.
" This day," it reads, " has been marked by no extraor-
dinary event. Rose, as usual of late, before sunrise ;
breakfasted with sister Alice and little Kate. Read
Scriptures (Job) to little Kate, who listened and seemed
to be pleased, probably with the solemn rhythm, for she
certainly can understand very little ; then prayed with
her ; then to town in omnibus, unshaven for want of
time."

Within that same year he also recorded in his joumal
that he was teaching " dear little Kate to read verses in
the Bible and listening to her recite poems."

Thus early, without any particular system probably,

but wholly delightfully and under a most patient and

winning master, begun the training of one of the most

astute and brilliant minds with which a woman was

210

KATE CHASE

ever gifted. She was keen and clever rather than pro-
found, and her quick intelligence caught and assimilated
the fruit of her father's years of study. Without having
his absorbing love of books, she yet read much and
forgot nothing. Chase used to say that in the miscel-
laneous reading of his boyhood, it was the pleasure he
derived from a stray law-book that determined his
choice of career. He pursued his profession with the
ardor of real love,^and his daughter imbibed from him a
substantial knowledge of its technicalities. He used to
go over his cases with her very much at first in the
spirit in which he had read Job to her, later because he
delighted in her understanding, and finally because she
had become genuinely helpful to him.

Well ordered and simple was the atmosphere of the
home in which she grew up. As was his custom from
the time he established his own home till the end of his
life, Chase called his household together at the begin-
ning of every day to ask the blessing and protection of
God. There were times, as seen from his journal, when
little Kate seems to have been his only companion, yet
the duty was never omitted.

She walked with him often to his office or to court in
the morning, both in Ohio and after they had removed
to Washington, talking sometimes of the things which
interested her, but more frequently of those which en-
grossed him, for it was his life and his ambitions that
gave color to both of their existences. He had taught
her early his favorite games, chess and backgammon,
which she often played with him in the quiet evenings

211

FAMOUS AMERICAN BELLES

they spent together, or, if it were out of doors, croquet
or some simple childish game, for she was part of the
relaxation of his lighter hours as she was the repository
of all the confidences and hopes of his public career.

His third marriage, in 1 846, to Sarah Ludlow identi-
fied him with one of the prominent families of Cincin-
nati ; Israel Ludlow, his wife's grandfather, having been
one of the founders of the city. Chase, himself, though
an Eastern man, born in Cornish, New Hampshire,
whence he had migrated on coming of age, was now
one of the prominent figures of Cincinnati, a busy,
prosperous lawyer, with excellent political prospects,
which met their first realization when, in 1 849, he was
elected to the United States Senate. When he came,
six years later, into the governorship of his State he
was again a widower, and Kate, though less than fifteen
years of age, took her place at the head of his home.

Accustomed since the dawn of memory to the most
considerate attentions from the most kingly of men,
she already carried herself with that noble grace that
made her presence felt in every assemblage above that
of all others, no matter how simply she clothed herself
nor how quietly she deported herself.

Chase was the first of Ohio's governors to take up
his official residence at Columbus. There, for a year,
Kate went as a day pupil to Mr. Heyl's seminary, and
later studied in the same institution music and lan-
guages, having for the latter an unusual gift. She spoke
French faultlessly, especially after her long residence

abroad, which came later in her life. Her German, while

212

Kate Chase

(Mrs. William Sprague)

From photofjraph bj' Julius I'lke

KATE CHASE

it was fluent, had always a suggestion of a* foreign
accent that in her seemed rather pleasing than other-
wise. Her native tongue she wielded with rare perfec-
tion, and no one who has heard Kate Chase talk will
ever forget the magic of her voice, the life her graphic
and discriminating language breathed into every thought
to which she gave utterance, while her wonderful eyes
expressed, even betrayed, every emotion. An old man
who served the Chase family for years in the capacity
of coachman once paid a tribute to the delicacy and
power of her verbal delineations which many a man of
more enlightened intelligence more gracefully, perhaps,
but not more aptly acknowledged. He said he knew
no greater pleasure than to take Miss Kate off in the
carriage with a book in her lap, and, without opening it,
for her to tell him every word that it contained from
beginning to end.

The positive element of her character had already
manifested itself by the time she was sixteen years old.
She was, at about that period, out of compliment to
her father, elected to the secretaryship of a charitable
organization of women, all of whom were many years
her senior. During the course of one of the meetings,
a physician, of whose services the body had availed
itself, and who had given offence to some of its mem-
bers, was made the object of an abuse as senseless as
it was verbose. The spirit of opposition was more
timorous in the feminine organization of that day than
it is in those that have been the outgrowths of later
years, and Kate Chase, alone, had the courage to rise

2U

FAMOUS AMERICAN BELLES

in defence of the absent doctor. Appealing to the
chair to silence the undignified outburst, she won on
the spot an ill-will that followed her long after those
who cherished it had forgotten its original cause. But
her young life was full of a sweet homage, and such a
graceful tribute as was conveyed in the knowledge that
one of the ex-governors of the State had named the
most beautiful rose in his famous garden after her, easily
atoned for the ill-will of a few people which seemed,
after all, but a ripple on the ever-broadening surface of
her life.

The growing strength of the Republican party, which
had been ushered into existence in her father's law
offices in Cincinnati, under the inspiration of Dr. Ga-
maliel Baily, revealed possibilities to a man of Chase's
ambition and ability that haunted him thenceforth till
the end of his life. Kate knew intimately the strong
men who formed the nucleus of that great party. She
knew its aims and purposes, and was in possession of its
secret history contained in her father's letters and jour-
nals and in her own memory of its inception and prog-
ress. Yet nothing ever wrung them from her, though
she was frequently approached by magazine editors with
offers that would have been a temptation even to those
in less need.

Her father's ambition became the absorbing object
of her life, developing in her, before she had reached
her twentieth year, a scientific knowledge of politics
that no woman, and few men, have ever surpassed. " I
know your bright mind," once wrote Roscoe Conkling,

214

KATE CHASE

in submitting to her a political problem, " will solve
this quicker than mine." It has been said that many
details of the campaign of 1884, against Blaine, who
was Conkling's political enemy, were planned at Edge-
wood.

To an intellect naturally endowed with many mas-
culine qualities, she added a woman's quicker wit and
greater powers of divination and an overmastering love
for the father in whose interest she exercised every
faculty of her gifted mind.

When the first convention of the Republican party
met at Chicago, in 1 860, to nominate a president, Chase
was a prominent candidate for that honor. His daugh-
ter accompanied him to Chicago, and thence for the
first time her name went forth over the land. His con-
fidence in her, his reliance upon her, treating her in all
respects more as if she were a son than a daughter,
her youth, and the purely feminine quality of her beauty
rendered her unique and conspicuous.

The choice of the new party fell upon Abraham

Lincoln, and Seward, who supported him and opposed

Chase's pretensions, received later the recognition of his

services when he was tendered the first place in Lincoln's

cabinet. Chase was, however, elected for the second

time to the United States Senate, where he took his seat

March 4, 1 86 1 . Two days later he had resigned and

gone into Lincoln's cabinet as Secretary of the Treasury.

His home was thus transferred to Washington, where,

going later on the Supreme Bench, he passed the balance

of his days, neither he nor his children ever returning to

215

FAMOUS AMERICAN BELLES

Ohio. Chase was even laid to rest in Washington, and
slept over thirteen years in beautiful Oak Hill. In the
fall of 1886, however, his daughter had him removed
to Ohio, that he might rest finally in the State that had
been his home and that was associated with his early
fame. There, a few months ago, she was laid by his
side.

At the capital of the nation Kate Chase attained a
social prestige never before enjoyed by so young a
woman, and a political power which no woman before
or since her day has ever possessed. Men of such
eminence and distinction paid her the court of an
homage so absolute that it would be difficult to esti-
mate how much of her father's prominence was owing
to her. Radiant as she was in her youth and beauty,
the most lovable side of her character ever discovered
itself in her tender, worshipping affection for him.

In September, i860, some months before Chase left
Ohio, there was unveiled at Cleveland, on the shores
of the Lake to which his valor brought fame, a statue
of Commodore Perry, many of the States sending
deputations to do honor to his memory. At the head
of Rhode Island's troops, in the military parade which
opened the ceremonies of the day, rode the governor of
that State, his alert young figure impressing itself upon
all the spectators of the scene. That night, during the
ball at the Kennard House which closed the event of
the day. Colonel Richard Parsons presented him to Kate
Chase. She was twenty years old at the time, and her
slender young figure already possessed that beautiful

216

KATE CHASE

symmetry that later found such unquaUfied favor in the
eyes of Worth, that great modern connoisseur of the
proportions of the female figure, drawing from him such
commendation as he never accorded to any other woman.
In a ball-gown showing the faultless contour of her neck
and throat, and the exquisite poise of her lovely head,
she was the revelation of a perfection which the human
form rarely attains. Hazel eyes, auburn hair, and the
marvellous whiteness of skin that usually accompanies
this combination, a full, low, broad brow, mobile lips,
a small, round chin, and a nose whose suggestion of an
upward tilt added its own peculiar touch of piquancy
to a face that was altogether charming rather than
classically beautiful, — thus to the eye was Kate Chase,
whose fame then superseded that of every woman in
Ohio, and was shortly to surpass that of every woman
of her generation in America. That she should hold
the interested attention of not only one but several
men for hours at a time was no unusual spectacle to
the people among whom her belleship days had dawned
early. Governor Sprague's devotion to her, however,
on the night that he first met her, because he was a dis-
tinguished stranger and a man of prominence in his
own State, and because there seemed, perhaps, in the
entire situation many of the elements of romance, be-
came at once a subject of interested comment.

The outbreak of the war took him to Washington.
Still governor of his State, he had raised a regiment
and equipped it at his own expense, for he was a man
of immense wealth. His generosity, his patriotism,

217

FAMOUS AMERICAN BELLES

and his valor at Bull Run, together with his youth and
the success of his political career, appealed to the enthu-
siasm of his countrymen. The news not only that he
was to marry, but to marry a woman so universally
idolized as was Kate Chase, heightened the effect his
achievements had already produced upon the mind of
the public. With a delicate sort of beauty and a
somewhat clerical appearance that belied his reputa-
tion for military prowess, he had at the moment a
fame quite equal to that of his bride. Their marriage,
which took place at Washington on the I2th of No-
vember, 1863, was the social event of that turbulent
period. All the details of the ceremony and of the
reception which followed it, and which were planned by
her, were on a scale of magnificence worthy of the
woman whose advent into Washington had marked a
new epoch in its social history.

She was the inspiration of the wedding-march com-
posed for the occasion and played by the Marine Band.
Under circumstances when a plain woman is an interest-
ing figure, of what moment was not the appearance of
one who could not, even on ordinary occasions, enter a
church without her presence being in some mysterious
way heralded to its remotest recesses so that every head
involuntarily turned towards her ! To those who beheld
her on that day she was the beautiful realization of the
ideal bride, and the life opening before her promised
every possible happiness. The ceremony was witnessed
by many men and women whose names were then

household words when the eyes of the whole nation,

218

KATE CHASE

watching the direction of the war, were fixed on
Washington.

The first days of their married hfe were spent in
Rhode Island, where Mr. Sprague built for his bride the
beautiful home that was worthy of her lofty concep-
tions of a magnificent existence, Canonchet. It was
one of the first of the palatial homes of that period,
and of which this country now possesses so many, and
the cost of its construction was unprecedented in the
annals of a people incredibly rich in all life's comforts,
but with their luxuriant tendencies for the most part
still latent.

From the governorship of his State Sprague went
into the United States Senate, and Kate Chase appeared
in Washington as the wife of the youngest member of
that body. The elegance of the new home there over
which she presided, her husband's wealth and promi-
nence, her maturer beauty, and the dignity with which
she carried a matron's honors, all tended to bring her
before the popular imagination in a more enchanting
light than even the glories of her girlhood had done.

The birth of her first child, a son, was a matter of
national interest, and the press of the day contained
lengthy accounts of the dawn of the little life for which
fate held in store so forlorn and tragic an ending. His
christening robe was as elaborately described as if it had
been that of a royal infant, and- the figures of the hand-
some settlement made upon him were widely published.

Chase, however, still loomed the central figure of his

daughter's life, for he continued to confide in her and

219

FAMOUS AMERICAN BELLES

take counsel with her in all that concerned him per-
sonally, as well as those measures that hand his name
down as that of the greatest Secretary who ever pre-
sided in the Treasury Department. He was the intel-
lectual power of Lincoln's cabinet, and though he con-
tributed much to the success of his administration,
there was small sympathy between the men personally,
and being overruled by the President in some of the
details of his department. Chase, in 1864, resigned his
position as a member of the cabinet. Donn Piatt, who
was one of the many young Ohioans to whom he was
a shining example and a high ideal, said of Chase, that
though he came in direct and intimate contact with
Lincoln for three years, he never appreciated nor under-
stood the man who could clear the heavy atmosphere
of a cabinet meeting, called to consider some such stu-
pendous proposition as the emancipation proclamation,
by a hearty laugh, induced by the reading of a chapter
from Artemus Ward. Lincoln, however, with his keen
knowledge of human nature, discerned Chase's character
more readily, and justly estimating the judicial qualities
of his superior mind, he sent his nomination as Chief
Justice of the United States to the Senate. It was im-
mediately and unanimously confirmed by that body, and
on the 6th of December, 1864, Chase, already a great
man, entered upon the duties of that office, to which,
with one exception, no name has given greater renown.
On February 24, 1 868, the House of Representatives
passed a resolution to impeach the President of the
United States. During his trial, which terminated on

220

KATE CHASE

May 26 of the same year, the country passed through
a storm of violent political passion. Above the roar of
an angry people and the threats which assailed him daily
from all sections of the country, rose the august pres-
ence of the great Chief Justice, hearing but not heed-
ing, feeling but not fearing their sting. Throughout
the country there was no name more frequently heard
during those days than that of Chase, and in Washing-
ton the President himself was not a more prominent
figure. He followed his usual custom of walking to
the court in the mornings, being frequently accompanied
by the daughter who had so often been his companion
in days when there had rested upon him no such burden
as the grave question then in hand imposed. She forms
one of the bright spots in the memory of that dark
period, and he often lifted his eyes during the sessions
of the court to refresh them with a glimpse of her face,
in whose luminous sympathy there was inspiration.
She sat in the gallery of the court chamber every day,
surrounded always by men whose names go down in
history among those of the foremost of their period
and country, — Garfield, Conkling, Sherman, Carl Schurz,
with Grant, the military idol of the hour, and Greeley,
of editorial eminence.

The chief-justiceship of his country is generally sup-
posed to fill the measure of a man's poUtical aspirations.
Upon Chase, however, the honors of his office imposed
no such quietus, and in 1868 he again came forward for
the Presidential nomination. As a Democrat, who had

left his party only on the slavery question, he offered

221

FAMOUS AMERICAN BELLES

himself as a candidate for the nomination of that party.
During the convention, which met in New York, Mrs.
Sprague, more ably with her maturer mind and greater
resources at her command than she had possessed in
1 860, endeavored to bring about the realization of that
dream of his whole public life. She was the first, how-
ever, to recognize the fact that the only platform on
which he could secure the nomination asked more than
he could honorably grant. Chase, watching the con-
vention from a distance, confirmed her judgment.

Our history furnishes the names of three men whose
ungratified ambition for the Presidency robbed them of
their motive in life. Chase, however, survived his dis-
appointment longer than either Webster or Blaine.
He was, by nature, profoundly religious, and he endeav-
ored to support with Christian heroism a blow whose
crushing force undermined his very vitality. In 1870
he suffered a physical collapse, from which, however,
stimulated by his remarkable will-power, he rallied so
far as to be able to resume his duties on the Supreme
Bench.

On March 23, 1871, the younger of his daughters,
the child of his third marriage, was married to William
Sprague Hoyt, of New York, a cousin of her sister's
husband. Her wedding fastened another brilliant
memory upon her father's Washington home at Sixth
and E Streets. In the drawing-room, to which she had
already brought so much fame, Kate Chase again stood
beside her father, and their presence on that day consti-
tutes to many people still living at the capital a memory-

KATE CHASE

picture which, with all deference to the bride, yet super-
sedes all others of that eventful day. He was a mag-
nificent man, over six feet in height, fair as a Saxon in
coloring, with a fine head, clearly defined and well-
made features, and a noble beauty of countenance ;
and she, robed in blue velvet of a turquoise tone, that
brought out the glorious red-gold of her hair and the
hazel of her eyes, with an Elizabethan collar rolling
high about her patrician neck, tall, slender, and full of
willowy grace. Perhaps the picture abides because it
was the last before the falling of those lengthening
shadows whence neither ever emerged.

On the 4th of March, 1873, Chase administered the
oath of office to President Grant, and in May of the
same year he occupied his chair as Chief Justice for the
last time. A few days before the last on which he had
felt able to go to court, his daughters and his grandchil-
dren, whom he was accustomed to have much with
him, being away from him, a sudden sense of loneli-
ness, a yearning for some loving human presence, seems
to have overpowered him, for he wrote to a young
relative in New York that he was going to her to be
for a while with her and her children. The day after
he arrived, however, he went forth quietly and perhaps
suddenly on that lonely voyage whence neither love
nor the glow of any human presence may withhold
us when it comes to be our turn. His body was sent
back to Washington, where it arrived on Sunday morn-
ing, the nth of May. There, clad in the awful dig-
nity of death, he lay a day and a night within the bar

223

FAMOUS AMERICAN BELLES

of the court his living presence had rendered so illus-
trious. A simple wreath of white rosebuds, not more
spotless than the life of him they crowned, was the last
offering of the daughter to whom his death, so far as
the world knew, brought her first sorrow.

She had, however, already come to the turn in her
short road of happiness, and had confronted not alone
the spectre of disillusion, which in itself would have
been formidable enough to a woman of her tem-
perament, but a substantial form of unhappiness that
neither her pride nor a brave spirit that never quailed
before it could long conceal. Her life has been so
probed, so bared to the scrutiny of the world, that but
little of its sorrow can be left to conjecture. That in
one of her own deficiencies lay undoubtedly the cause
of much of her unhappiness, while it served to render
others less culpable, in no degree lessened the force of
the misery it entailed upon her.

A knowledge of the proper value of money, abnor-
mally developed in many, was totally lacking in Kate
Chase. It appealed to her simply as a means of grati-
fying the needs and wishes of the moment, never as
something to be hoarded for the satisfying of those of a
future time. History contains the names of many men
and women otherwise illustrious but born apparently
with the same defect. The great wealth which came
to her through her marriage she expended lavishly,
not alone upon herself, but upon all whose happiness
it was thus in her power to augment, for such princely
natures are rarely selfish. She gave, all her life, fre-

224

KATE CHASE

quently with a generosity wholly out of proportion
to her means. Sprague probably did not realize her
munificent tendencies till after the shrinkage in his
fortune caused by the financial panic of the early sev-
enties. They then became the cause of those fatal
misunderstandings whence sprung later conditions of in-
supportable wretchedness. A divorce was granted her
by the courts of New York, with permission to resume
her maiden name, of which she availed herself some
years later, when Sprague married again.

With her three daughters she retired to " Edge-
wood," a suburban home on the hills two miles north
of Washington, which had come to her from her
father and which is closely identified with the last years
of both their lives. The house, an ample unadorned
brick structure, stands on the brow of a hill overlooking
the river, the city, and other hills in its vicinity. From
her father she had also inherited an income somewhat
smaller than might have been anticipated, for, although
he had piloted the nation through the financial difficul-
ties of the war, his personal finances were not flourish-
ing. She found a legal adviser in a friend of her father's
who had been a frequent visitor at Edge wood during
Chase's lifetime, attracted thither both by his admira-
tion for Chase and by the pleasure of that intercourse
with his gifted daughter which he shared in common
with many men of brilliant minds, few of whom ever
came in contact with her without succumbing to
a species of intellectual infatuation. With all the

feminine graces that attract, however, she had many
15 225

FAMOUS AMERICAN BELLES

of a man's characteristics, and was capable of maintain-
ing their intercourse at all times on an intellectual foot-
ing. The idle gossip of people who had no conception
of the true loftiness of her soul, magnified by those
who still felt and feared her political power, cast its
blight upon her life. Silently scorning a world that so
cruelly misinterpreted her, she voluntarily abandoned
her place in its midst.

She took her children to Europe and there educated
them, remaining as long as her resources would permit.
When they were exhausted she came home. Edge-
wood gave her a sorry welcome. Everywhere, within
and without, it showed signs of long neglect. Yet
such as it was, it was home and full of memories of
her father, whose portrait still hung in its broad hall-
way, and whose marble bust still adorned its library.
There, too, were his beloved books that he had craved
in his youth when he had turned from nature, which
became, however, the tender solace of his ailing years,
when he liked to be alone with her and his own
thoughts, while he took long tramps over the hills.
There, during the last three years of his life, he had
pursued conscientiously that tranquil existence which
he realized could alone prolong his days. To his
daughter it was all that remained, and even it was slip-
ping from her grasp. The men of her father's genera-
tion were gone, and she was as a stranger in the land
that had once resounded with the echo of her name.

Edgewood was advertised for public sale. Some-
thing of its history crept into the press of the country.

226

KATE CHASE

It struck a chord of memory and appealed to a class of
men who had the means of gratifying their sympathies,
men of a younger generation, but who venerated the
memory of Chase and gave substantial proof of their
veneration when they saved his home for the daughter
he had so idolized.

She never evinced any desire to resume her place in
that life in which she had once been a motive power.

Among those who knew her best she had loyal friends
who loved and admired her to the end. Her servants
had always worshipped her, and her own children fre-
quently lost themselves in the spell her presence wrought.

Her eldest daughter went upon the stage, but married
shortly after her debut and abandoned whatever hopes
she may have had of a histrionic career.

It was a singular fate that the last days in the life of
a woman whose youth had scarcely known a moment's
exemption from the pursuit of an admiring world
should have been passed almost exclusively in the
society of the gentle daughter, whom she ever lovingly
called her little Kitty.

Two loyal canine friends followed in her footsteps to
the last, studying all her movements with a vigilance
that was not without its measure of flattery, and re-
ceiving from her a degree of consideration that she
never failed to show to those of lowly condition in
whom she recognized merit not always visible to a
more conventional eye. Often the only sound about
the lonely house that greeted an occasional visitor, was

the friendly thump of the collie's tail against the porch

227

FAMOUS AMERICAN BELLES

floor, the shrill tone of inquiry in Chiffon's bark, or
the melancholy wail of a violin. When Edgewood
was finally closed and abandoned after Kate Chase's
death, new homes were found for her two dog friends :
for the collie, at Brookland, a suburb of Washington,
and for the terrier, in the city itself A few days later
both had disappeared, and a boy who had occasion to
go to Edgewood found them on the porch of the
deserted house. It had been a long tramp for them,
especially for the little terrier, which had had to thread
its way across the city. Buoyed up with hope, they
had arrived from their opposite directions only to re-
alize that a life which at least had been happy for them,
had come to its end.

With that rare courage with which she had borne all
the other ills of her life, Kate Chase endured uncom-
plainingly the physical sufferings which its closing days
brought to her, endeavoring at first to put them from
her and with an aching body to go on heroically with
her daily life as she had often done with an aching
heart. She surrendered only a few days before the end,
realizing then the unusual gravity of her condition, and
in the small hours of the morning of the 31st of July,
1 899, with her three daughters beside her, she at length
closed her tired eyes tranquilly and without fear, to open
them never again upon a world that had long since for-
gotten the once-cherished name of Kate Chase.

For the last few hours yet to be passed beneath the

roof of Edgewood, they laid her in the room wherein

her life had centred in both its glad and sad days, — her

228

KATE CHASE

father's library. Its windows overlooked in the fore-
ground the garden in which she had spent of late so
many lonely hours, and in the distance, lying beneath
the spell of a summer's day, the beautiful city, where
regnant woman never held greater sway than she in
whose quiet face there was now no trace either of the
triumphs or the weariness of her life, but the content-
ment of grateful rest.

239

MATTIE OULD

(mrs. OLIVER Schoolcraft)

IN the vicinity of one of Richmond's fashionable
schools there was often seen on winter afternoons,
in the late sixties, a group of young girls, who
possessed far more than the usual attractiveness that
belongs ever to health and youth. Two, at least, Lizzie
Cabell and Mary Triplett, were singularly beautiful.
The third, a tall, slender girl, with a trim figure, dark
skin and hair, and eyes perhaps downcast as she
stepped lightly along listening to her companions, a
stranger would scarcely have observed. If, perchance,
however, as they paused on a street corner for a last
word before separating, the downcast eyes were lifted,
there gazed from out their soft depths a spirit that
transformed the entire face. They were truly the win-
dows of a soul, looking out upon the world with a
frankness that was irresistible, and with a certain caress-
ing fondness for life that begot a kindred glow in all it
looked upon. In her sweet voice there was the same
tone of caress as it gave a parting utterance to some
flashing thought to which, likely as not, she paid the
tribute of that honest smile, whose witchery still lingers
in many minds. As she continued her walk home-

230

MATTIE OULD

ward many lifted hats greeted her passing, many eyes
followed her, and her name was murmured among
many groups, for, young as she was, Mattie Ould was
already wandering in the pathway of a fame that was
to make her later the idol of the people of the South.

Before she was beyond the tutelage of her old
mammy the piquancy of her wit had established her
title to popularity. It had, moreover, much of that
audacity that had characterized the wit of another Vir-
ginia belle, Ann Carmichael, of Fredericksburg, who
flourished fifty years earlier in the century. Conven-
tionality was a term with which Mattie Ould had no
concern. She was a genius, and with a spontaneity
that was overwhelming she dared to give utterance to
every sparkling thought that crossed her mind. She
was a very small girl when she made that bright sally
which connects her name with that of her father's
friend, General Young.

A famous raconteur and hon vivant, and revelling in
her gift for repartee, her father frequently had her
brought forward as a little child to grace his stag din-
ners, seating her in the centre of the table, whence she
sent forth such sallies of wit as captivated many a
veteran dinner-giver and guest.

One evening, when she had kept up her amusing
prattle until a later hour than usual, she went up to
General Young, who was seated near her father, and
stood beside him, resting her head against his shoulder.
" Come, come," called her father, " it's time mammy
was hunting you up, little sleepy head. General

231

FAMOUS AMERICAN BELLES

Young can't get on very well with you there.'* "No,
no," insisted Mattie, dreading a summons of that auto-
crat, in whose presence there could be neither pleading
nor protest ; " don't send for mammy. I'm not sleepy.
I was just trying an old head on young shoulders."
She was quoted through all grades of Richmond life,
and long before she had grown to womanhood a fre-
quent question on many lips was, " Have you heard
what Mattie Ould said ?" Then every one listened to
her latest bon mot^ which was repeated till the whole
city had heard and laughed. With a dash and esprit
that were peculiarly her own, she had many masculine
traits, an independence and a camaraderie that were irre-
sistible.

With the magnetism of her gifts she would have
been known to fame even had her family been of
less prominence. Well placed, however, as she was in
life, her brilliancy illumined a vast horizon. Her father.
Judge Robert Ould, always held a distinguished posi-
tion, both in the District of Columbia, where he was
born, and in Richmond, whither he removed at the out-
break of the war. Besides being thrown in intimate con-
tact with the prominent citizens of both places, he was
frequently called upon to extend his hospitality to emi-
nent strangers who came to him with letters of intro-
duction. His home during part of his residence in
Washington was in the quaint old building opposite
the Treasury Department, now Riggs Bank. There
President Buchanan was his guest for several days after
he quitted the White House. No extraordinary prep-

232

Mattie Ould

(Mrs. Oliver Schoolcraft)

From photograph by George S. Cook

MATTIE OULD,

arations, however, were made for the entertainment of
the ex-President in a household where distinguished
guests were a frequent occurrence. A loose rod in the
stair-carpet was secured on the suggestion of Mrs.
Quid's mother, lest Mr. Buchanan, not accustomed to
the circumnavigation that it had imposed upon the
family, should fall and break his leg, in which event
they would have him three weeks instead of three days.

Judge Ould came prominently before the public as
the district attorney at the time of the prosecution of
General Daniel Sickles for the killing of Barton Key,
Sickles being defended by Edwin M. Stanton, who be-
came more widely known later as Lincoln's Secretary
of War.

Quid's prominence was rather augmented after the
outbreak of the war and his removal to Richmond,
where he was made commissioner of the Confederate
government for the exchange of prisoners. He had
married a celebrated Virginia beauty. Miss Sarah Tur-
pin, and had four children, all of whom, with one noted
exception, are still living. His wife, after having been
long an invalid, died before his family was grown, and
he, some years later, married Mrs. Handy, of Baltimore,
the mother of the beautiful May Handy, one of Rich-
mond's belles of the present day.

Mattie Quid was born in the District of Columbia,
which she left in her childhood for the home with
which her fame is associated. She returned, however,
to spend the last two years of her school life in the Vis-
itation Convent, Georgetown. Though known to all

233

FAMOUS AMERICAN BELLES

Richmond from her childhood, her renown throughout
the South dates from her first appearance at the White
Sulphur Springs, which in her day, before the advent
of the Northern pleasure-seeker, still possessed all the
distinctive features of a Southern watering-place.
Though it was already a long-established resort, to
the magic which her presence shed about it during the
seasons that she spent there it owes much of its wide
fame to-day. All the details of the war were then yet
vivid memories, and there many a battle was fought
over again in graphic words by men whose bravery and
gallantry in action have never been surpassed. Many
of them had been distinguished officers in the army of
the Confederacy, — Joe Johnston, of Virginia ; Wade
Hampton, of South Carolina ; Gordon, of Georgia ;
Beauregard, of Louisiana; Butler, Gary, the gallant
Pickett, of Gettysburg fame ; and Hood, of Alabama,
then hfting himself about on his crutches. It was such
men as these who stamped their striking individuality
upon the life of the Southern watering-places at that
period, and among whom, keenly appreciating the wit,
ardently loving the beauty, and reverencing the good-
ness of a woman beyond all things, Mattie Ould came
to be the greatest belle the South has had since the
war.

While she was ever superlatively attractive to men,
she was yet a generous friend to women, and fre-
quently avenged the slights to which she saw some
plain woman subjected, for, besides the scintillating
qualities that made her a popular idol she had many

234

Lizzie Cabell
(Mrs. Albert Ritchie)

MATTIE OULD

noble traits that commended her to a more profound
and lasting admiration.

The toast which is more celebrated than any of her
other equally clever utterances was offered at a supper
at the Springs, given in honor of herself and another
famous Richmond belle, Mary Triplett, the late Mrs.
Philip Haxall. Miss Triplett had been asked to pro-
pose a toast and had declined. Mattie Ould, however,
rose without hesitation, lifted her glass, inclined her
graceful head towards Miss Triplett, and in her clear
musical voice, said, " Here's to beauty, grace, and wit,
which united make a Triplett." There was, indeed, a
peculiar enchantment about all she did and said that
seemed never to have belonged to any one else. Her
dancing infused a new charm into the atmosphere of a
ball-room, and as a horsewoman she possessed a skill
and grace that few could rival.

Her horse once ran away with her in Richmond, just
as the groom mounted her and before she had put her
foot in the stirrup. It dashed off at top speed, running
several squares through the residence district of the city,
and then turned into a business street, where it rushed
madly into a hack. The hackman, however, had seen
it coming, and realizing that he could not get out of its
way, he stood up, and throwing his arm around the ^
rder's waist, he lifted her from the saddle as the horse
crashed into the hack, partly demolishing it, and fell.
A great crowd witnessed the rescue, and cheered lustily
for the courageous old hackman. When Mattie Ould
was recognized, however, the enthusiasm assumed a

235

FAMOUS AMERICAN BELLES

more substantial form, and the hands of many men
went generously into their pockets. He was never for-
gotten, and as long as Mattie Ould lived she provided
for him and his family, some of the many who had
loved her keeping up the good work after she was gone.

Though she was the object of the ardent devotion
of many men, she did not marry until she had passed
her twenty-fifth year. It was rumored that she was
engaged to a friend of her father's, a man many years
her senior, and the indignation with which her father
received the news of her marriage to Oliver Schoolcraft
substantiated in many minds the report of the former
engagement.

Her marriage occurred at the end of the summer of
1876, which she had spent with her grandmother at
the White Sulphur Springs. Thither Schoolcraft, one
of the wealthiest of the younger set of men who
adorned Richmond life, had followed her, taking with
him his own valuable horses and traps, with which ad-
juncts he was ever at her disposal. They drove over
to Salem one day, and were quietly married there that
evening, at the home of Mr. and Mrs. John A. McCall ;
one of Miss Ould's brothers and several of her friends
witnessing the ceremony. As no preparation had been
made for her marriage, she wore, instead of the con-
ventional white satin, a simple gown of white organdy,
set off with bands of black velvet.

She was never more bewitchingly lovely than she

was that night, and so impressed herself indelibly on

the minds of all who gathered about her, some of

236

V ^

Mary Triplett

(Mrs. Philip Haxall)

From photograph by Roseti

MATTIE OULD

whom were but little children. Being asked to sing in
the course of the evening, she complied with her usual
graciousness, for part of the charm of her manner lay
not only in her readiness to contribute to the pleasure
of others, but in the absolute enjoyment she evinced in
so doing. She made her own selection, and sang the
little song that was then in favor with her, " Under the
Daisies." It was singularly prophetic, for just as the
daisies of another spring were putting forth their bloom
the sweet voice, whose vibrations had rung so many
glad echoes from the world, lapsed forever into silence.

Schoolcraft took her to Richmond the day following
their marriage, where her father insisted upon having
the ceremony performed again, owing to some techni-
cality of the law to the effect that a marriage license
should be obtained at the usual place of residence of
the bride. Though the spirit of comradeship had ex-
isted to an unusual degree between this father and
daughter, he never forgave her until it was too late for
that forgiveness to be any comfort to her.

She lived, after her marriage, in an elegant suite of
rooms, built over Schoolcraft's handsomely equipped
stables. When some one twitted her about the pecu-
liar location of her new abode, she rephed, with her
unfailing readiness, that she was not the first person
who had lived in a stable, and quoted a precedent that
no Christian could gainsay.

One morning, in the spring following her marriage,
Richmond was appalled by the report which, in the
course of a few hours had spread over the entire city,

2Z7

FAMOUS AMERICAN BELLES

that Mattie Ould was dying. The world was so full
of her and all she did and said, that it was not credible
that her beguiling presence was passing from it. A
silent depression and a sense of personal loss settled
upon the people in every walk of life.

Richmond had never beheld such a sight as Mattie
Quid's funeral. Old St. Paul's Church and the Square
opposite were thronged, the streets all along the route
to the cemetery were lined, and even the hills of beau-
tiful Hollywood were black with people. The entire
population of the city was there, many, who were too
poor to ride, walking, for she had brightened all their
lives, and she belonged to them all.

She lies all through the spring and summer beneath
a bed of daisies, and near her sleeps the infant whose life
closed her own. In the memory of the people of the
South she is yet a living presence, whose words, wise
and droll, are repeated, ever with a keen relish for their
pungency, for she touched all things with that true wit
which is

*' Nature to advantage dressed.
What oft before was thought.
But ne*er so well expressed.*'

238

JENNIE JEROME

(lady RANDOLPH CHURCHILl)

TO-DAY, when there are so many American
women adorning high places and fiUing more
or less leading roles in British society, it is
difficult to realize that only a little more than a quar-
ter of a century ago there was a strong movement
afoot, among certain leaders of that society, to ex-
clude their fair transatlantic cousins from London
drawing-rooms. As to the oft-recurring Anglo-Ameri-
can marriage, while there are yet many people who
look askance upon any sort of an international alliance,
that prejudice that frowned so ominously upon it some
years ago has wonderfully abated on both sides of the
water. The Queen herself recently confessed that she
had regarded it at one time as rather a hazardous ex-
periment, but realizing that, with her broad education
and elastic temperament, the American girl adapts her-
self to a new environment with a facility which would
scarcely be possible to the less flexible English girl,
Her Majesty's apprehensions have been gradually
allayed.

One of the first American women before whom these
later-day barriers of social prejudice gave way was Miss
Jennie Jerome, of New York. As the wife of Lord

239

FAMOUS AMERICAN BELLES

Randolph Churchill, and ably championed by his
mother the Duchess of Marlborough, she penetrated
the innermost recesses of British society, opening the
way more than any other woman to the position her
countrywomen occupy there at the end of the century,
and holding herself a place second to that of no other
American woman in Europe.

The admiration she attracted as a young girl, the
wonderful part she played in the life of her husband
and is at present playing in the lives of her sons, the
unusual influence she has undeniably exercised in Eng-
lish politics, the intimate contact into which the events
of her life have from time to time thrown her with the
crowned heads of Europe, — the Czar of Russia, the
Emperor of Germany, and the Queen of England, —
have all tended to give her a unique place in the his-
tory of the latter days of the Victorian era. In England
there is no woman below the royal family whose name
and personality are so generally known as Lady Ran-
dolph Churchill's.

Her prominent identification with the Primrose
League has carried her fame into the colonies and
into India. Many people in Russia and Germany
follow her career with keen interest, the press of
both countries bringing her frequently before the pub-
lic, and even in self-centred France the women of the
aristocracy, in imitation of her political achievements,
have from time to time essayed to " jouer la Lady Ran-
dolph Churchill."

She is the eldest of three daughters of the late Mr.

240

JENNIE JEROME

Leonard Jerome, and was bom in Brooklyn, on the
9th of January, 1854. There and in New York she
passed her early childhood.

Her mother was a woman of independent fortune
and her father an enterprising and successful man of
affairs. He was the founder, in New York, of the
Jockey Club, and his name figures conspicuously in
the annals of the turf of both England and America,
he having been one of its active patrons in the former
country, whose racing system he introduced into
America.

His family migrated to Paris when his eldest daugh-
ter was in her eleventh year, and there his children grew
up and were educated. Miss Jennie Jerome's artistic
and musical gifts were carefully trained, and she has
been considered ever since she made her entree into
English society as one of its most accomplished pianists.
Her name appears frequently on the programmes of
concerts given in behalf of charity, and is always a pow-
erful drawing card, for she plays with a clearness and
delicacy of touch rarely attained by an amateur.

France was at the height of its glories under the
second empire when the Jeromes took up their resi-
dence in Paris. The court, presided over by one of
the most beautiful women who ever wore a diadem,
was characterized by almost unprecedented magnifi-
cence. Paris then, as now, led the world in all matters
of personal adornment, and one feature in that regime
of luxuriant display, inaugurated by the Empress, is still
felt to-day in every quarter of the globe where women
16 241

FAMOUS AMERICAN BELLES

make any pretence of following fashions in dress. She
never permitted any woman to appear twice in her
presence in the same gown. As a result, there dates
from her brief era of leadership an extravagance in
woman's dress that was before undreamed of, and which
has had the effect of raising the details of a toilet from
a subordinate to a ruling position among women in
fashionable life, with a loss of much that gave a truer
beauty to existence under a system when the sparkle
of a woman's mind was of greater value than the flash
of her jewels.

Mrs. Jerome, a woman of wealth and taste, easily
acquired a position of distinction in the fashionable life
of the French capital at that time. Her eldest daugh-
ter meanwhile grew up with a reputation for great
beauty, her fame increasing as the unusual gifts of her
bright mind unfolded themselves. She was one of that
group of clever and beautiful young girls with whom
the Emperor and Empress from time to time sur-
rounded the little Prince Imperial, and she participated
at Compiegne in the memorable celebration of one of
the few birthday anniversaries which fate accorded him,

The Franco-Prussian war drove the Jeromes across
the channel. They tarried in England during the days
that marked the fall of the empire and the uprising of
the Communards with their awful deeds of devastation.
The summer of 1873 they passed at Cowes.

Miss Jennie Jerome was then in her twentieth year,
tall, slender, with a thoughtful countenance denoting
both talent and character in its broad brow and square

242

JENNIE JEROME

chin. Her mouth was grave and sweet, while her great
dark eyes, that are yet the most striking feature of her
face, her purple black hair, and her clear olive skin
gave her a distinctive place among the blonde daugh-
ters of England. Always a striking figure in their
midst, the contrast was perhaps never more marked
than upon the occasion of the marriage of Princess
Louise of Wales to the Earl of Fife, when the blonde
type of the British women was so much in evidence in
the demi-toilettes commanded by the Queen, and when
Lady Randolph Churchill's brunette coloring was so
well set off by her yellow satin gown, with a diamond
star twinkling above her brow against her black hair.

Though the nomadic tendency of Americans fre-
quently leads them abroad, where they mingle for
awhile in the life of various European capitals, there
were fewer American women at that time forming a
permanent part of foreign society, and one so gifted
mentally and physically as was Miss Jerome soon
became a noted figure. She attracted everywhere the
most evident admiration, never impairing the effect her
appearance produced by the least manifestation of
vanity.

To the Isle of Wight also that summer there be-
took himself a young English nobleman, the second
son of the sixth Duke of Marlborough. But three
years out of college, where he had not been distin-
guished as a student, but rather for the irresistible
attractiveness of his personality and for the enjoyment
he extracted from existence, there was little in Lord

243

FAMOUS AMERICAN BELLES

Randolph ChurchilPs life in the summer of 1873 that
foreshadowed the greatness he was destined to attain.
Restless, ambitious, full of energy, with no specific
object upon which to expend it, he hesitated between
a diplomatic and a military career, and meanwhile,
since taking his degree in 1871, he had travelled over
the whole of Europe.

He was already an idol to his mother, towards whom
he ever showed that thoughtfulness that is the acme
of gallantry. He had much of her dash and spirit,
and she entered sympathetically into all the events of
his life ; he on his side never failing to report to her
immediately, either in person or by message, all his
successes. When he met Jennie Jerome, and for the
first time the future assumed a tangible and very beau-
tiful form, he confided in his mother and at once
solicited her interest in the young American girl.

To Miss Jerome's mother, however. Lord Randolph
Churchill, a younger son, with no particularly bright
prospects in life, did not appeal as a desirable match.
She returned to Paris with her daughters. Lord Ran-
dolph followed, and there at the British Embassy, in
January, 1874, he was married to Miss Jerome.

With an ambition and talent equal to his own, she
entered completely into his desire to make for himself
a place of distinction in life. The dissolution of Par-
liament early in the year of his marriage offered the
opportunity for a political career. He began at home,
in the borough of Woodstock, in which Blenheim
Palace, where he had been born twenty-five years

244

Jennie Jerome

(Lady Randolph Churchill)

From photograph by Van der Weyde

JENNIE JEROME

before, is situated, and secured his election to a seat
in the House of Commons without being asked any
questions as to his political creed, which, it was taken
for granted, was identical with that of his family.

Like his wife's father, he took an active interest in
matters pertaining to the turf, owning several famous
race-horses and capturing during the course of his
life some notable prizes. His first speech in Parlia-
ment was to call the attention of the first Commis-
sioner of Public Works to the hard and dusty condi-
tion of Rotten Row, and to ask that it be put in better
shape, without delay, for both horses and their riders.

During the first six almost silent years of his Par-
liamentary career, while he was studying the men and
measures he subsequently arraigned with so much
brilliancy, his young wife was adapting herself to the
social life of his country, whose events are as well es-
tablished as those of its political life. In a dutiful
way which gives it a dignity not possible in a coun-
try whose social usages admit of more caprice, every
one lives up to the well-appointed order in which, be-
ginning with the first drawing-room in the early spring,
the various functions of each season follow one an-
other.

While there may be more refreshment and enthu-
siasm in the novelty which American society admits
of, it lacks that stability that errianates from the very
sameness with which one English year follows in the
footsteps of another, and that sense of ancient respect-
ability which rises from the consciousness of partici-

245

FAMOUS AMERICAN BELLES

pating in the same pleasures from youth to old age in
which one's fathers similarly participated in their time.

Lady Randolph Churchill easily overcame the preju-
dices which existed in the minds of some English
women against all American women. Young as she
was, there was a commanding quality in her very pres-
ence which vanquished that narrowness that harbors
petty dislike on a basis of nationality.

Both of her sisters married in England, one to
Moreton Frewen and the other to the only son of
Sir John Leslie, Bart., of Glaslough Monaghan.

Her two sons were born, the first, Winston Spencer
Churchill, on the 30th of November, 1874, and the
younger, John Winston Churchill, in February, 1880.

Between the duties of her home and those of a
social nature, which her position in the world entailed
upon her, the first period of her life in England passed.
From i88q, however, dated the dramatic period of
Lord Randolph Churchill's career, in which his wife
bore so conspicuous a part. He rose to the leadership
of that small section of the House known as the
" Fourth Party," which, coming forward as an evidence
of the vigor yet possessed by the Conservatives, suc-
ceeded in June, 1885, in overthrowing the Gladstonian
ministry. He was frequently compared to Disraeli,
and many people prophesied for him a similar career.

In 1883, in connection with Sir H. Drummond
Wolf, Lord Randolph Churchill founded, in the inter-
ests of the Conservative party, that powerful organiza-
tion, the Primrose League. In a membership to-day

246

JENNIE JEROME

of over one and a half million, with Knights, Dames,
and Associates, Lady Randolph Churchill stands num-
ber twelve upon its rolls. The kingdom and empire
of Great Britain are dotted with its Habitations.

With its development there began a new phase
of Lady Churchill's life. She became from that mo-
ment thoroughly an Englishwoman, identifying herself
closely with her husband's public life and interests,
aiding him not only with the popularity she had
already attained, but with the remarkable sagacity she
displayed in reference to all political questions. With
the qualities that rendered her more charming as a
woman she combined those most valuable in a man.
Ambitious, intrepid, discreet, she was yet graceful, tact-
ful, wise, and witty. She became at once a force
among the members of the League, and, besides being
much in demand at the social events at its various
Habitations, she endeavored continually to impress
upon its members the influence each might exercise in
behalf of " that party which is pledged to support all
that is dear to England, Religion, Law, Order, and
Unity of the Empire."

In her character of Dame of the Primrose League
she has participated in so many electioneering contests
that she is almost as well known in England as any
man in public life. When her husband, in 1885, at-
tacked the seat held by Mr. John Bright for Birming-
ham, seconded by the Duchess of Marlborough, she
canvassed the constituency for him. Never before had

women gone thus among the workingmen of Birming-

247

FAMOUS AMERICAN BELLES

ham, entering the factories as well as their homes, and
addressing them both collectively and individually.
Though they made much havoc in the ranks of Radi-
calism and greatly diminished his votes, they did not
succeed in defeating " the tribune of the people."

Lady Churchill is a rousing speaker, and, with her
great beauty and magnetism, evoked immense enthu-
siasm, her carriage being frequently surrounded and
followed for some distance by cheering crowds. In
South Paddington her efforts told with better effect.
Lord Churchill securing the election in that district.

With the accession to ofBce of Lord Salisbury's
government. Lord Churchill went into the Cabinet a^
Secretary of State for India, — the real head of affairs of
the far-away empire where the power is represented by
a governor-general. During his brief tenure of that
office his wife was decorated with the imperial order
of the Crown of India, which has so recently been
bestowed upon another American woman in the person
of the present governor-general's wife.

Lord Churchill stood at this time at the very head

of his party, and when a few months after resigning

the office as Secretary of State for India he again went

into the Cabinet as Chancellor of the Exchequer and

leader of the House of Commons, being at the time but

thirty-seven years of age, there seemed opening to him

a future of almost unprecedented brilliancy. More than

ever was it said that he was treading in the footsteps

of Lord Beaconsfield, to whom he had been so often

compared, and the Prime Ministership seemed almost

248

JENNIE JEROME

within his reach. His name was on every tongue, and
when he appeared in public places accompanied by his
wife, whose tall, slender figure and clear-eyed, interested
face were as well known as his own, he was frequently
greeted with outbursts of applause. When she drove
in Hyde Park her carriage was frequently followed,
and she was pointed out with the most enthusiastic ad-
miration.

Not only in England, but accompanying her hus-
band to Russia and Germany, she excited in both of
those countries a similar sentiment, there being among
the people an eager desire to see the beautiful American
who was so much admired by the court circles.

Attractive as she was under all circumstances, she
never more admirably reflected the fine qualities of her
character than on that day when her husband rose
amidst the absolute silence of the House of Commons
to give his reasons for withdrawing from the Cabinet.
Absorbed in him, she followed intently his every word
and gesture, though aware beforehand of every syllable
he would utter. With perfect self-control she re-
vealed nothing either of regret, disappointment, or any
sentiment upon which a guess at his plans for the
future might be hazarded.

Socially her life ran in much the same channel. So
great was her beauty and so many were her talents that,
though her husband gradually withdrew from public
life, she was continually in the public eye, being con-
stantly in demand to open fairs, distribute prizes, and
take part in concerts. In March, 1888, she went to

249

FAMOUS AMERICAN BELLES

Clydebank to christen the " City of New York," at
that time one of the most remarkable vessels that had
been built. During the following summer she opened
an electrical exhibit at Birmingham, and a few days
later conferred the annual awards at Malvern College,
her husband accompanying her and making addresses
upon both occasions. About this time also she made
her first appearance as a literata in an article on the
social life of Russia, based on the observations she had
made while in St. Petersburg with her husband. Well
informed, keenly observant, clever, and witty, she en-
tered the lists without handicap, and her position to-day
in the world of letters is at least unique. The most
costly quarterly in existence, now entering upon its
second year, is owned and edited by her.

In 1891, when he was but forty-two years old, Lord
Randolph Churchill came suddenly face to face with the
beginning of the end of his remarkable and crowded
life. The utter physical collapse that followed, termi-
nating in death in January, 1 895, threw light upon much
that had seemed inexplicable in the latter days of his
public career.

Accompanied by his wife, he journeyed around the
world in quest of the health which he was destined
never to find. They passed through New York, Lady
Churchill's first home, but made no stay, hastening
across the continent to San Francisco. In Egypt, real-
izing how futile had been the long days and nights of
travel and exile, he begged to be taken home to pass
there the last few hours that yet remained to him.

JENNIE JEROME

From all who saw them they evoked pity and admi-
ration,— pity for the man, stricken and doomed, in the
very prime of his days and with the highest place
among the statesmen of his time almost within his
grasp, and admiration for the wife who, aglow with
beauty, spirit, and ambition, manifested for him during
those months of tragic gloom, in which his life closed,
all the devotion and admiration which the most success-
ful moments of his life, when he stood on the very pin-
nacle of fame, had called forth from her gratified heart.

The untimely disappearance from the world of a
man whose magnetic nature had made him a leader of
men and an idol of all classes of society appealed
powerfully to public feeling. The tolling of the
funeral bell from St. George's, in Hanover Square, a
little after noon on the 24th of January, 1895, an-
nounced his death.

Though she took no part in the doings of the world
for some time after her husband's death. Lady Ran-
dolph Churchill did not drop from its memory, nor is
she in any degree less interesting to-day than she was
as the wife of an eminent statesman. Her musical
gifts and tastes gradually drew her from the seclusion
of her early widowhood, and she reappeared in public
first at concerts and at the opera, still dressing in black.

Her social graces and talents make her the genius of
many house-parties, where individual gifts and accom-
plishments show to best advantage and are most in
demand. In the tableaux and burlesque given at Blen-
heim Palace in January, 1898, to raise money for the

2^1

FAMOUS AMERICAN BELLES

Restoration Fund of St. Mary Magdalene's church at
Woodstock, she appeared as a lady journalist, portray-
ing the character with a realism that manifested an ac-
curate knowledge of the original. She was also a
guest at Chatsworth House during a recent visit of the
Prince and Princess of Wales, taking part there in the
private theatricals which were part of the entertainment
offered to their Royal Highnesses.

To her sons she is a congenial spirit, being inter-
ested in the things that interest them, particularly in
yachting, horses, and the various racing events of each
year. It is owing largely, no doubt, to her love of an
active out-of-door life that her figure yet retains much
of the slenderness and suppleness of young womanhood.
She stands and walks with all the grace of a girl, and
is one of the most noted skaters in England.

Not only into their recreations, but into the serious
side of her sons' lives, she enters with that earnestness
which made her so inseparable a part of her husband's
life.

In the summer of 1899 the elder of her sons, Mr.
Winston Churchill, made his first effort for a seat in
Parliament. Oldham, in Lancashire, the scene of his
endeavors, has two Parliamentary seats, which both be-
came vacant at the same time. Though they had
been filled by Conservatives, the result of the balloting
in 1899 showed that the cotton-spinners, who form a
large class of the voters of the borough, were tired of
Conservative rule, for both Liberal candidates came in

with heavy majorities.

252

JENNIE JEROME

Towards the end of the campaign Lady Randolph
Churchill went vigorously and enthusiastically to her
son's assistance. " The Liberal candidates being mar-
ried," she said, "have an advantage." Though she
won him many votes and greatly reduced the opposi-
tion, as she had done in the days of the Birmingham
contest, when her husband attacked Bright's seat, the
result was inevitable, and both mother and son ac-
cepted it with the grace and spirit of thoroughbred
woman- and manhood.

There is an anecdote frequently related of Lady
Churchill's ready wit, called forth by a situation which
arose during the electioneering campaign, in which she
was taking an active interest, of Mr. Burdett-Coutts,
husband of the old Baroness Burdett-Coutts, who was
at the time over eighty years of age. An old voter
upon whom Lady Churchill called, and who seemed
ready enough to cast his vote for Mr. Burdett-Coutts,
took occasion, however, to relate to her, with much
relish, the price which the beautiful Duchess of Devon-
shire had paid a butcher for his vote in the days of the
famous Pitt and Fox contest, permitting him to kiss
her lovely cheek. He concluded his narration with a
direct intimation that he would consider a similar
reward as fair payment for his own vote.

"Very well," replied Lady Churchill, smiling a
gracious compliance, " I will book your vote on those
terms, but you must remember that I am working for
Mr. Burdett-Coutts, and I must, therefore, refer you for
payment to the Baroness."

253

FAMOUS AMERICAN BELLES

In June, 1899, the first number of Lady ChurchiU's
quarterly, the Anglo-Saxon Review, which had been for
several months the subject of much conjecture and
speculation, appeared.

* Have you heard of the wonderful new magazine
Lady Randolph' s to edit with help from the Queen ?
It's a guinea a number — too little by half.
For the crowned heads of Europe are all on the staiF,'*

ran the opening lines of perhaps the cleverest of the
many verses and paragraphs her new venture called
forth.

Its contributions included papers from Lord Rose-
berry and Whitelaw Reid, a poem from Swinburne,
with stories from Henry James, Gilbert Parker, and
Sir Frank Sweetenham, and a drama from John Oliver
Hobbes. Among the illustrations were a picture of
the Queen, as frontispiece, and a reproduction of Gil-
bert Stewart's portrait of Washington. The binding
was in keeping with the contents, and was of dark-blue
morocco, richly tooled in gold, with the royal coat of
arms in the centre, surmounted by the crown of Eng-
land, with supporters, a reproduction of a cover designed
in the seventeenth century by the court binder, Abraham
Bateman. It sold,, as have the subsequent editions, for
a guinea a number, and was, as the enterprising editress
said in her preface, a volume " worthy to be taken up
into that Valhalla of printed things, the library."

At the outbreak of the war in the Transvaal in 1899
Lady Randolph Churchill gave another evidence of her

254

JENNIE JEROME

public spirit and enterprise which identified her once
again with her native country. As chairman of the
committee of the American hospital ship " Maine," she
took an active part in the direction and equipment of
one of the finest ambulance ships in the service. The
ship itself was loaned by the Atlantic Transport Com-
pany, and named in memory of the ill-fated American
battle-ship " Maine." The contributions for its equip-
ment were made by Americans on both sides of the ocean.
Among the American women living in England who
actively interested themselves in the matter were Mrs.
Joseph Chamberlain, Mrs. Arthur Paget, Mrs. Bradley-
Martin, and both of Lady Randolph Churchill's sisters.

An appeal, issued on the 27th of October, for thirty
thousand pounds met with a speedy response, and in
the course of a few weeks the American hospital ship
" Maine," flying the flag that was a gift from the Queen,
and with accommodations for two hundred sick or
wounded soldiers, carrying its corps of surgeons and
nurses and Lady Randolph Churchill herself, was on its
way to Durban.

Though it was as the wife of Lord Randolph Church-
ill and through her close identification with his interests
that Lady Churchill first came prominently before the
world, it is undoubtedly her own personality that has
made for her the place she holds there to-day.

On the 28th of July, 1900, Lady Randolph Churchill
became the wife of Mr. George Cornwallis West.
Though marriages of women to men many years their
junior are by no means rare in British society, the

255

AMOUS AMERICAN BELLES

rumor of this engagement, which had been afloat for
quite a year, excited an unusual amount of comment
and criticism. The ceremony was performed at St.
Paul's Church, Knightsbridge, the Duke of Marlbor-
ough leading Lady Churchill to the altar. Though
widows of titled men in England may upon entering
into a second marriage retain the name and title ac-
quired through their former marriage. Lady Randolph
Churchill settled the much-discussed question as to
whether she would retain hers by her decision to be
known as Mrs. George Cornwallis West.

Not yet in middle life, and with two sons to be
launched upon their careers, in which she has already
foreshadowed what her part may be, the world may still
expect to hear much of her, for there is a bracing and
vigorous quality in her individuality that renders her
interesting and inspiring to many classes and many
countries. She has been frequently reproduced in the
fiction of her era, more than one English writer drawing
his material continually from her life and character.

To what extent her beauty forms part of her magnet-
ism is with many people a debatable question. Though
Long painted her as a typical beauty, and Sargent's can-
vas of her that hangs in her own Hbrary portrays an ex-
quisite feminine loveliness, she leans perhaps too much
towards the masculine in mental poise and temperament
to be an adequate reflection of purely feminine beauty.
A many-sided, strong, self-sustained character, her out-
ward form is an expression of her own uncommon per-
sonality rather than a type of conventional beauty.

256

NELLIE HAZELTINE

(mRS. FREDERICK W. PARAMORe)

AMONG the members of the graduating class at
Mary Institute, St. Louis, in the year 1873, was
a young girl who, in addition to the bright mind
and intellectual ambition she had already manifested,
was endowed with so extraordinary a physical beauty
and so lovable a character that much of the brilliancy
of her life might even then have been foretold. She
was not yet seventeen years old, and was as absolutely
unconscious of the unusual loveliness of her person as
she ever seemed to be even after ten years of adulation.
Her figure had already attained a faultless contour,
and in her simple graduation gown of white French
muslin, the flounces of its skirt headed with wreaths of
pink roses and green leaves, and its round bodice offset
with a bertha covered in the same design of roses and
leaves, she suggested all the fragrance and beauty of a
flower. Her red-gold hair seemed to reflect some of
the sun's own glory, and with the marvellous delicacy
of her skin, the deep wine-color of her eyes, and the
classic perfection of her features, there can be little
doubt that she was, as she was so often said to be later,
the most beautiful woman ever born west of the Mis-
sissippi.

17 257

FAMOUS AMERICAN BELLES

Among her school-mates Nellie Hazeltine had won
that popularity that was hers in after years to so re-
markable an extent among all women. The power she
possessed of diffusing herself and all that pertained to
her among others precluded every thought of envy, and
those with whom she came in contact experienced
rather a sense of personal gratification in the contem-
plation of her gifts than any desire to despoil her of
them or of the admiration they attracted.

She was the only daughter of Captain William B.
Hazeltine, a man who had made a large fortune in the
mercantile world, and she went from school to further
enhance the attractiveness of an already beautiful home.
There for several years she continued her studies, though
it was not unusual then for girls of her age to take up
their position in the social world immediately upon
quitting school. As a result her accomplishments were
of a higher order than those commonly possessed by
the young women of her period. She was well read,
she spoke French with the same ease with which she
spoke her mother tongue, and was a musician of un-
usual ability. Such attributes soon gained for her a
wide reputation and a unique position in the society of
her native city.

In the matter of its social complexion St. Louis has
generally been classed among the cities of the South.
Besides the French, who formed a large proportion of
its early settlers, those who rose early to a leading posi-
tion were the families who had migrated there from

Virginia and Kentucky. They were slave-owners and

258

Nellie Hazeltitie

(Mrs. Frederick W. Paramore)

From photog-raph by J. C. Straus

NELLIE HAZELTINE

landholders, and as such gave a substantial character to
the social foundations of the city. The Anglo-Saxon
gradually absorbed the French element, which, though
it disappeared from the political horizon, still formed a
powerful undercurrent in the lives of the people, har-
monizing the forms of their social intercourse and
imparting a certain artistic value to their existence gen-
erally, that gave St. Louis a distinctive place among
the growing and wealthy young cities in its vicinity.
This, with the character it took from the dominant
race, which restrained it from that tendency to display
that was elsewhere more or less apparent, yet which ever
inculcated the sacred laws of hospitality, blended into
a delightful whole and gave to the city a charm that it
has never lost.

Of such a civilization Nellie Hazeltine has unques-
tionably been the fairest product. Yet no one was less
conscious than she of the eminence of her position or
of the sensation her appearance invariably created.

Shortly after the beginning of her social career she
went with her father to Washington to attend a com-
petitive drill of military organizations from all sections
of the country. While there she was selected to pre-
sent the colors to the company of which her father was
captain. Among the spectators of a scene which is
always more or less inspiring, was a man who, though
already past middle-life, was yet not proof against the
witchery of such a singularly lovely presence as Nellie
Hazeltine's. From the moment she thus crossed his

life, like many another man of less prominence, Samuel

259

FAMOUS AMERICAN BELLES

J. Tilden followed her career with an ardent and chival-
rous admiration that increased as her beautiful character
developed and disclosed itself

When he came before the country as the Democratic
candidate for the Presidency, and captured not only the
nomination but the majority vote of the people, when
his name was on every tongue in America, and every-
thing that concerned him was of absorbing interest, the
story of his devotion to Nellie Hazeltine spread through-
out the length and breadth of the country.

From the moment it became known that Samuel J.
Tilden had been elected President of the United States,
till Samuel J. Randall, Speaker of the House of Rep-
resentatives, cutting the tie vote of that body, redeemed
its pledge to abide by the decision of the Electoral
Commission, which declared Rutherford B. Hayes
President of the United States, forms one of the most
thrilling periods in our political history. It was but
eleven years after the great civil struggle, and people
living to-day, when the sinews of the nation are again
knitted, cannot easily estimate the bitterness engendered
by the campaign that fell during our centennial year.

The contest reached nothing less than a sublime

climax when Randall, with nothing in his great form or

his strong face to betray the struggle it had cost him,

stepped quietly down from the Speaker's platform, and,

taking his place on the floor of the House, uttered amid

its breathless silence that affirmative syllable upon which

hung national tranquillity.

Both men took the oath of office, — Tilden, the peo-

260

NELLIE HAZELTINE

pie's choice, in the privacy of his own home in New
York, and Hayes, twice, first, on Saturday afi:ernoon,
the 3d of March, in the White House, overlapping
Grant's term of office by a few hours, that there might
be no intermission occasioned by inauguration-day
faUing on Sunday ; and again on Monday, the 5th of
March, in the presence of the people.

A Presidential campaign that proceeds and terminates
in fhe usual way is sufficient to entail an enormous
amount of publicity upon the candidates. The cam-
paign of '76, however, gave Tilden both a prominence
and a place in the affections of the people of his coun-
try that could scarcely have been greater had he been
permitted to fill the high office to which they elected
him.

His bachelorhood was an interesting feature of his
personality, for we had had at that time but one bachelor
President. The sentimental side of public opinion was
satisfied, however, with the report that he was soon to
be married to Miss Hazeltine. On her part, though his
admiration for her was easily apparent, she never referred
to his having offered himself to her any more than she
revealed the fact of any other man ever having honored
her with a similar proposal. Yet it was known through
men who could not easily disguise the sharpness of their
disappointment at her rejection of their suit that she
was continually the recipient of such offers.

Though she was already well known socially, in both
St. Louis and New York, her fame was established after

the summers of 1876 and 1877 ^^ ^ vastly wider basis.

261

FAMOUS AMERICAN BELLES

During the latter season she made a tour of the Eastern
watering-places, and went for the first time to the Green-
brier White Sulphur Springs, succeeding Mattie Ould
in its social leadership during the last days of the old
regime^ when it occupied the first rank as a distinctively
Southern resort.

There was no one who made any pretence of rivalling
her, though fair women from every section of the South
still upheld the fame of the old resort. She has been
frequently compared to Mattie Ould, and the history of
their short lives furnishes several points of similarity.
Hers was a more faultless type of beauty than Mattie
Ould's, however, and she had a reserve and dignity that
were in keeping with its high order, whereas, Mattie
Ould was distinguished by a flow of spirits and a bril-
liancy of wit that captivated every fancy and carried all
before it. Both had the power to attract and hold the
attention and admiration of large circles of people, one
by the overwhelming sparkle of her words, the other
by the magic of a lovely presence.

Nellie Hazeltine was at all times as charming in the
society of her own sex as she was among men ; and
women in every rank of life had for her a tender attach-
ment. Many a girl trying her uncertain young social
wings for the first time owed to her that subsequent
enjoyment and happiness which is called success. She
was absolutely unselfish, and without display used the
remarkable power which her own fascinating person-
ality gave her to add to the happiness or improve the

condition of others.

262

NELLIE HAZELTINE

On the 2d of December, 1881, she was married to
Mr. Frederick W. Paramore, a young railroad man of
St. Louis, and a son of Mr. J. W. Paramore, who was
president of the Texas and St. Louis Railroad.

Memories of her, like those of Mattie Ould, centre
in the days of a glorious girlhood. She was but twenty-
seven years of age when she passed out of life, a little
more than two years after her marriage, followed by an
infant son whose existence had measured but a few days.
The entire city of St. Louis mourned her loss, and few
people have been laid to rest amid such evidences of a
profound and universal grief as followed her. Her
grave in Bellefontaine, whither strangers visiting St.
Louis still frequently make a pilgrimage, was literally
filled in with flowers by the young women of the city,
to whom her life had been a beautiful example.

In the Museum of St. Louis, there hangs a portrait
of her painted by Carl Gutherz. It is a full-length
figure dressed in white and standing in her own drawing-
room. Her abundant hair is arranged after the peculiar
fashion of the day, with a heavy fringe low on the fore-
head. From beneath it, however, there looks down
upon the beholder a face reflecting something of both
the heart and mind whence flowed the charm of Nellie
Hazeltine's personality, and of a beauty so ideal as to
be almost sufficient in itself to immortalize her among
the women of her country.

263

MARY VICTORIA LEITER

(baroness curzon of kedleston)

FOR the second time within the century an Amer-
ican woman has risen to viceregal honors.
Mary Caton, the granddaughter of Charles Car-
roll of Carrollton and the widow of Robert Patterson,
of Baltimore, through her marriage, in 1825, to the
Marquis of Wellesley, who was at the time Viceroy of
Ireland, went to reign a queen in the country whence
her ancestors, more than a century before, had emi-
grated to America. In Mary Victoria Leiter, whose
life, to the people of a future generation, will read much
like romance, we again behold an American woman,
who, like the Marchioness of Wellesley at the time
she became Vicereine of Ireland, is still young and
beautiful, filling a similar position in India, with its four
hundred millions of subjects.

The parallel between her life and that of Mary
Caton, however, goes no farther. Wellesley was
already in possession of the Governor-Generalship of
Ireland when he married Mrs. Patterson. He was,
nroreover, beyond the threescore mark in years, and he
bore "his blushing honors thick upon him," having
already been Viceroy of India. Curzon was but thirty-
nine years old when the governor-generalship of the

264

MARY VICTORIA LEITER

latter mighty country, the shining mark of many a
man's whole career, was offered to him. His public
life bore little more than " the tender leaves of hope,"
though his writings on Eastern topics were already ac-
cepted as highly authoritative. Lady Wellesley had
but to follow the leadership of a man of recognized
ability and established fame, while Lady Curzon walks
side by side with the man who is making that steep
ascent which the British editorial mind has classified
as " Salisbury's most interesting experiment." It is,
moreover, an open secret that, far from shrinking from
the new office, with the weight of responsibility which
it imposed, she encouraged her husband to accept it.

While we are familiar with that phase of interna-
tional marriage which confers rank and title upon the
daughters of our republic, no American woman has
ever played such a part in the British empire as has
fallen to the lot of Lady Curzon. From that day in the
spring of 1895, when she became the wife of the young
Commoner, George Nathaniel Curzon, she stepped into
English history ; the days of her American belleship
became a fragrant reminiscence. The qualities which
had given them brilliancy, however, continued to illu-
minate the broader horizon of her life in England, and
have become in her present exalted position the admi-
ration of her own country, whose interest in her is
purely personal, and the gratification of England,
whose interest is political and much farther-reaching.

To the vast majority of people, who have but a

superficial knowledge of Lady Curzon, her charm lies

265

FAMOUS AMERICAN BELLES

In the phases of that exterior life which are visible to
all and easily discerned from afar, — her youth, her
beauty, her wealth, the artistic perfection of her rai-
ment, and the glory and pageant of her present exist-
ence. These, however, are but foot-lights to the real
power of the woman rising beyond them.

As a girl in America she stood forth against the rich
background of her home as distinctly as she is sil-
houetted to-day against the magnificence of the throne
of India. It was not so much what she did or said,
though that was sometimes of an unusual order, that
made her the social power she was in America ; it
was rather what people instinctively felt that she was.
" What thou art," says Emerson, defining that force
we call character, " so roars and thunders above thy
head, I cannot hear thee speak." She was serious and
earnest rather than scintillating, with a reserve and dig-
nity of manner tempered by a sweetness that admitted
no suggestion of austerity.

The grace with which she now meets every situa-
tion, the intelligent interest she manifests in every
theme with which she is approached, are not matters
of happy chance or accident. She has been carefully
equipped for her place in life. Studious and ambitious,
she has known little of frivolity or idleness. Every
faculty and every gift with which she was endowed
have been conscientiously cultivated, so that, like the
wise virgins of the parable, she was found ready when
the hour came with a light that guides not only her

own footsteps, but is seen from afar.
• 266

Jennie Chamberlain

(Lady Naylor-Leyland)

From tile painting- by H. Schmiechen

MARY VICTORIA LEITER

Though Lady Curzon's life has been largely cosmo-
politan, the city of Chicago, in which she was born
and passed her first thirteen years, has a more substan-
tial claim upon her than any in which she has since
lived. She evidently reciprocates the feeling of the
former city, for it was to it that she recently addressed
a plea in behalf of the famine-stricken districts of
India. It was there that her father, Mr. Levi Z. Leiter,
amassed his immense fortune, laying its foundation as
a partner in the dry-goods firm of Marshall Field &
Co. There, also, her brother, Joseph Leiter, still con-
tinues his remarkable position in the stock market.

In the year 1881 Lady Curzon's family joined that
ever-increasing colony at Washington that is made up
of wealth and leisure. It has in recent years become
a distinctive feature of the capital, its members having
built there some of the handsome homes that adorn the
city, and which they occupy usually for a few months
each year. Their social functions are attended with
much magnificence, and they have the entree to official
society, and frequently to that exclusive circle of aristo-
cratic old families, many of whom have lived there in
unostentatious elegance ever since the nation transferred
its capital to the banks of the Potomac.

For a time Mary Leiter attended the school in

Washington founded some years ago by Madam

Burr and subsequently conducted by her daughters.

She was a good student. Quiet in her manner, she

emitted only occasionally that sparkle of wit or fun

that so often flashes from the happy school girl of

267

FAMOUS AMERICAN BELLES

fourteen. She exercised, however, a fascination to
which both her teachers and companions were sus-
ceptible. Her beauty of face, her pose and carriage,
together with a sweet, girlish modesty and a gracious-
ness that was simple and unaffected, rendered her at
all times most attractive.

The greater part of Miss Leiter's education, however,
was conducted at home, under governesses, and her
individual tastes and talents thus developed. Travel,
and a more or less prolonged residence abroad at various
times under most happy circumstances, cultivated her
powers of observation and developed in her that breadth
of mental vision that at an unusually early period not
only removed the crudities of youth, but gave her that
poise and finish that made her so charming to men and
women of mature and brilliant intellect.

Comparatively little was heard of her family socially
till after her debut^ which occurred in the winter of
1888, and their present social prominence in the United
States is due to the remarkable impression she every-
where created. As a new-comer she was viewed criti-
cally, for she aimed always at the highest and best in
the social castes of her country. She was weighed in
the balance with the daughters of better known and
longer established families of the East, and was found
their equal in beauty and breeding and frequently their
peer in charm of manner and intellect.

In Washington her father leased the home, on

Dupont Circle, of the late James G. Blaine, and there

Miss Leiter spent the first years of her young woman-

268

MARY VICTORIA LEITER

hood, during which such homage was paid her that she
never entered a drawing-room nor crossed a ball-room
without attracting the attention and gaze of every one.
She planned and directed the numerous social func-
tions given there by her parents on a scale of magnifi-
cence that was not easily approached, and she brought
to the house a fame such as it never derived from the
occupancy of its distinguished owner nor any of his
family.

When her father built his own home, which is con-
sidered by many people the most beautiful in Wash-
ington, her taste found a new field for its display, both
in the plan of its construction and in its final decora-
tions. It was minutely described in the press of the
country, particular emphasis being given to the apart-
ments appropriated to Miss Leiter's use, so undoubtedly
was she the social genius of her family and the figure
who held the interest of the public.

A few years ago the favorable verdict of a man
whom a recent historian of New York society has
designated its self-appointed dictator went far towards
establishing a woman's reputation for beauty or dis-
tinction on a national footing. Mr. Ward McAllister
undoubtedly wielded a singular power and influence,
and his unqualified admiration of Miss Leiter, while
it reflects to-day much credit upon his judgment,
played at the time a considerable part in the wide
spread of her fame.

Her development was rapid and continuous, and she
rose in the course of a few years to a national promi-

269

FAMOUS AMERICAN BELLES

nence. It has been said of her that she was not true
to early friendships. " The law of nature is alteration
forevermore," and every mind that expands must out-
grow the objects that satisfied it at one period of its
existence unless they are capable in a degree of keeping
pace with its progress. As a matter of fact, while there
was a graciousness in her manner towards all with
whom she came in contact, she formed but few close
friendships, the natural reserve of her temperament
rendering it impossible for her to respond easily to
those intimacies which enter into the lives of so many
girls.

During the second administration of President Cleve-
land there existed between his young wife and Miss
Leiter a degree of friendship that was as flattering to
one as it was to the other, for the Clevelands enjoyed the
reputation of choosing their friends for their personal
charm.

During both of his terms of office Mr. Cleveland
had a home in the suburbs of Washington, where he
and his family passed much time between seasons, and
where they frequently entertained the friends whom
they admitted more or less to their intimacy. There,
during the spring of the year in which she was married,
Miss Leiter passed every Sunday prior to that event,
carrying away with her to another land a vivid im-
pression of one of the most admirable women who
ever adorned public life in America.

England was by no means an unknown country to
Miss Leiter. She had been accustomed from her early

270

MARY VICTORIA LEITER

childhood to spending much time in Europe, and a
London season, which is the climax of many an
American girl's social ambition, was not a new experi-
ence to her. The season of 1894, however, marked
a turning-point in her life. Hon. Thomas F. Bayard,
who was our Ambassador at the Court of St. James at
the time, had been married not long before to Miss May
Clymer, of Washington, a daughter of Dr. Clymer, of
the navy, and a granddaughter of Admiral Shubrick.
The Bayards had known Miss Leiter at home, and they
undoubtedly contributed much to the reception she
everywhere met during that season in England, for
they themselves were much sought after, and the dis-
tinction of their position gave prominence to her.
They brought her into contact with a class of men
and women among whom her own highly endowed
mind found an inspiration on whose wings she rose in
a short time to a new fame.

Among those who paid her the tribute of a profound
admiration was a rising young secretary of the kingdom,
a man of scholarly tastes and an author of established
reputation.

" I found,'* recently wrote Julian Ralph from India,
" a sure key to the viceroy's character in between the
lines of a dozen speeches that he made in January and
February, 1899. Some of his quahties, more especially
his quick sympathy, humor, and the sentimental and
romantic inclination, are rather more American than
English. ... It is consoling to us Americans to find
that the man who has attracted so much beauty and

271

FAMOUS AMERICAN BELLES

talent away from our country is himself the next thing
to an American."

When he met Miss Leiter, though he was but thirty-
five years of age, Mr. Curzon had been a member of
Parliament, representing the district of Southport, for
eight years. He had already wealth and distinction,
and was the heir to the title of his father, who is the
fourth Baron Scarsdale. His ambition, moreover, was
of that high order which found in Miss Leiter a re-
sponsive attitude and a quickening sympathy. His
literary and political career — in a word, the position he
had made for himself through his own talents — was to
her a matter of far deeper interest than the eventual
inheritance of his father's estate and title. The repu-
tation which his writings on the political questions in
the East had given him particularly attracted her ad-
miration.

Replying four years later to the address of welcome
delivered to him by the city of Bombay, Lord Curzon
expressed gratification at its kindly tone both for him-
self and his wife, who, he said, came to India with
sympathies as warm as his own, and who looked forward
with earnest delight to a life of happy labor in the
midst of its people.

The interest which Miss Leiter's remarkable career
had inspired intensified with the announcement of her
approaching marriage. Her home was besieged by
newspaper correspondents representing all sections of
the country, showing how widely she was known.

The 22d of April — the date selected for her wedding

272

Mattie Mitchell

(Duchesse de Rochefoucauld)

From photograph by C. M. Bell

MARY VICTORIA LEITER

— was an ideal spring day. At an early hour in the
morning people began to gather around St. John's
Episcopal Church in Washington, where the ceremony
was to be performed at half-past eleven o'clock, with a
hope of catching a glimpse of the fair and famous
bride. By eleven o'clock the streets and sidewalks
and Lafayette Square were solidly banked with spec-
tators, and it was with difficulty that a passage-way
was kept open for the carriages of those who had been
invited to witness the ceremony. Women cried out
that they were being crushed, and others fainted, yet
the crowd continued to increase till the moment of
the bride's arrival.

St. John's Church, one of the oldest in Washington,
is constructed without a central aisle, so that bridal
parties enter by one side aisle and return by the other.
Thither have wended their way many couples that have
passed into fame and history. At its altar, a little more
than six years before Miss Leiter pronounced her mar-
riage vows, another American girl. Miss Mary Endicott,
of Massachusetts, whose father was at the time Secre-
tary of War, gave her hand to a distinguished son of
Great Britain, Hon. Joseph Chamberlain.

The ceremonies at both of these marriages were ex-
quisitely simple. Bishop Talbott, of Wyoming, offici-
ated at that of Miss Leiter and Mr. Curzon, assisted
by Rev. Dr. Mackay Smith, the pastor of the church.
Lord Lamington acted as best man for Mr. Curzon,
and Miss Leiter was attended by her two sisters. She
was singularly pale, and, enveloped in the whiteness of

i8 273

FAMOUS AMERICAN BELLES

her bridal veil and gown, the Easter lilies that adorned
the altar and chancel seemed not more fair than she.
Her slender figure looked its full height, which is the
same as her father's, — five feet seven inches. Her face,
whose every feature is indicative of character and per-
haps too serious when in repose, but wholly charming
when lighted by a smile which expresses so much intel-
ligence and sympathy, bore evidence of the recollection
of her thoughts. It was, as it is to-day, a face of un-
usual beauty, oval in shape, with dark-gray eyes, straight
black brows, a sweet, sensitive mouth, a prettily shaped
nose, and a low forehead with fine black hair brushed
simply away from it and emphasizing its whiteness.

On her wedding-day she solved with her usual good
sense a problem that has confronted many brides
since gloves first came to be considered a requisite of
their costume, as to how under such circumstances a
ring may be gracefully assumed. She entered and left
the church with hands uncovered and unadorned save
by her engagement-ring with its superb setting, a ruby
and two diamonds, and the gold band which supple-
mented it.

The ceremony was witnessed by Mrs. Cleveland, the
Cabinet Ministers and their families, the diplomatic
corps, and a number of people of purely social promi-
nence from several cities in the United States and
England.

For the reception which followed, the bride's beau-
tiful home was decorated entirely with peach-, cherry-,
and apple-blossoms. She stood beneath her own por-

274

MARY VICTORIA LEITER

trait, whose frame was suggestively outlined with forget-
me-nots, to receive the many who gathered about her
with good wishes and good-byes.

The first days of her honeymoon were spent at
" Beauvoir," the suburban Washington home of Mr.
and Mrs. John R. McLean, who placed it at her dis-
posal for that period. There she entertained several
times at dinner, that Mr. Curzon might meet some
of the people who give charm to the society of the
American capital.

The year of his marriage proved also an eventful
one in the public life of Mr. Curzon. He was made
Under Secretary of State for Foreign Affairs and Privy
Councillor, and re-elected to his seat in Parliament, all
within that brief period.

Shortly after Mr. Curzon's return to England the fall
of the Rosebery cabinet necessitated a new Parlia-
mentary election. His American bride entered into
the English political campaign of the summer of 1 895
with an enthusiasm that was the delight of his constitu-
ents and the admiration of his opponents. It was a
first test of her power in a field that called forth her
best efforts, and as she became conscious of her strength
and of the possibility of being a force in the political
life of a great country, the highest attributes of her
nature unfolded themselves. Among a people who
" make a romance of marriage," ah electioneering tour
before the honeymoon had waned roused an interest
upon whose results no politician, however astute, could
reckon. Not only did Mrs. Curzon accompany her

275

FAMOUS AMERICAN BELLES

husband on the occasions when he addressed the people
of his borough, but, quite independent of him, she
drove through the Southport district of Lancashire,
seeing the wives of his constituents and even the
electors themselves, and manifesting an intelligent in-
terest in the political affairs of their country that, from
a foreigner and a beautiful young woman, conveyed a
most delicate flattery and subtle gratification.

A Liberal paper, commenting on the election after
the vote had been cast, gallantly insisted that Curzon
owed his success far more to the winning smiles and
irresistible charm of his American wife than he did to
his own speeches.

The following four years of Lady Curzon's life were
spent in England between a town house in London and
her husband's country-seat, Kedleston Hall, in Derby-
shire. Two daughters were born to her within that
period, the first in 1896 and the younger in August,
1898, shortly after Mr. Curzon's appointment to the
Governor-Generalship of India.

Mrs. Curzon's parents visited her every summer, and
her father bought for her the London residence, Num-
ber One Carlton House Terrace, the first in a row of
twenty-two handsome houses with a colonnade of
marble pillars, overlooking St. James Park, one of the
most exclusive localities in London.

In close companionship and absolute sympathy with
a statesman whose life promised greatness, in the full
enjoyment of a social existence in which the grace and

strength of her personality had already made them-

276

Mary Victoria Leiter

(Baroness Curzoii of Kedleston)

From photog^raph by Miss Alice Hughes

MARY VICTORIA LEITER

selves felt, happily placed in all her relations to life,
it would have seemed, in consideration of the youth
of both herself and her husband, that for the time
being at least their measure of good fortune was well
filled. In the summer of 1898, however, Mr. Curzon
was offered the greatest gift of the British government,
the Governor-Generalship of India. Until Mr. Bal-
four's authoritative announcement of the fact in the
House of Commons many people had discredited the
rumor on the ground that such an office had never
been offered to a Commoner.

In India, which Mr. Curzon had visited frequently
and where he had already become thoroughly known
through his writings, the news of his nomination was
received with entire satisfaction. In London it excited
unusual interest.

In addition to more or less lengthy editorial com-
ment, every journal reviewed his strikingly brilliant
career, and in enumerating his unusual advantages
through which he might hope for success in the dis-
charge of the duties of the high office he had accepted,
his American wife was ranked among the first. It was
regarded as a happy circumstance that such a woman
should partake of the glories and responsibilities of
his position.

According to an old English statute, a man who is
duly elected to the House of Commons may not resign
his seat. It may be vacated only by death, expulsion,
legal disqualifications, or by accepting an office from
the crown. As soon as Mr. Curzon was nominated to

277

FAMOUS AMERICAN BELLES

succeed Lord Elgin, whose term as Governor-General
of India still had several months to run, in order to
enable him to sever his connection with the Parliament,
he received from the queen the appointment of High
Steward and Bailiff of the Manor of Northstead.

The office, however, is merely honorary, and was re-
tained only until he was officially proclaimed governor-
general. His seat in Parliament at the election follow-
ing his withdrawal was carried by the Liberal candidate,
the late Sir Herbert Naylor Leyland, whose wife, an-
other beautiful American, Miss Jennie Chamberlain,
of Cleveland, had played much the same part in his
campaign as Mrs. Curzon, under similar circumstances,
had taken in that of her husband.

During the month following Mr. Curzon's appoint-
ment to the governor-generalship he was elevated to
the peerage as Baron Curzon of Kedleston. As the
name in which he had made his reputation, he desired
to retain Curzon in his title.

The eldest son of Earl Howe being Viscount Curzon,
however, he was obliged to agree to two conditions
imposed by Lord Howe, — first, to be known now as
Curzon of Kedleston, and, second, on succeeding to
his father's title, to drop Curzon Kedleston, which was
never to be resumed either by himself or his heirs.

A new life, quite unlike anything she had known,
now opened before Lady Curzon, — a life of real power
over millions of subjects, a life of significant cere-
monial and regal pomp, in which this daughter of a
republic assumed with her husband the leading role,

278

MARY VICTORIA LEITER

She entered completely into its spirit, planning all the
details of a sumptuous existence which is so highly
gratifying to an Eastern people and in such perfect
accord with its conceptions of power. India likes to
see the outward form of empire, and measures thereby
its internal strength.

Lady Curzon was already familiar with the political
and historical side of the country whither fortune was
leading her. For her acquaintance with its social side,
which more especially concerned her, she equipped
herself with that same faultless taste that had marked
her career in the society of her own country and
England.

With the lavish hospitality she had in contemplation,
she ordered, several weeks before her departure from Eng-
land, thousands of cards of invitation for dinners, even-
ing receptions, and garden-parties, including menu cards
and ball programmes. For all of these occasions she
provided herself with the appropriate habiliments whose
exquisite details, the art with which they were chosen,
and the genius with which they were worn, becoming
identified with her personal beauty, acquired shortly
after her appearance in Calcutta a fame as wide as the
empire.

Her last days in England forshadowed the glories of

her life in India. At a ball given at Welbeck Abbey

by the Duke and Duchess of Portland in honor of the

Duke and Duchess of Connaught, shortly before her

departure, Lady Curzon of Kedleston, whose grace had

once given charm to many an American ball-room, was

279

FAMOUS AMERICAN BELLES

among the few honored with a place in the royal
quadrille. While the Portlands do not entertain often,
they enjoy the reputation of having the most sump-
tuous social functions that are witnessed anywhere in
England. Their supper-tables glitter with a gold ser-
vice of great artistic and intrinsic value, and their
spacious picture-gallery makes a ball-room whose at-
tractiveness is seldom rivalled.

For several days Lord and Lady Curzon were guests
at Welbeck, going from there to Southport to make
a farewell visit to Lord Curzon 's old Parliamentary
district, in which Lady Curzon had won votes and
admiration in the first days of her residence in Eng-
land. The locomotive of the train in which they
made the journey was decorated with the royal stand-
ard and the stars-and-stripes, Lady Curzon's nationality
being, as it always is, thus gracefully remembered.
The streets of the town were similarly decorated, in-
cluding, besides the insignia of the two great Anglo-
Saxon countries, the star of India.

It was a memorable day in Southport, whose popu-
lation turned out en masse to welcome them, the city
and county functionaries in their official robes greeting
them at the railroad station. As they drove through
the streets of the town, their coach drawn by four
horses, the bells of Christ Church peeled forth a joy-
ous welcome, and pride and admiration shone in every
face that lined the route to the art-gallery. There they
held a public reception. Sir William Forwood presiding

and making a speech, in which he dwelt with gratifica-

280

MARY VICTORIA LEITER

tion upon the unqualified approval expressed by the
nation at Lord Curzon's appointment as Governor-
General of India, and referred gallantly to the charm
which the young American vicereine would impart to
the court.

On the 30th of December Lord and Lady Curzon
landed at Bombay amid the firing of a royal salute
from the war-ships in port. The city welcomed them
with a display of much magnificence in its decorations
and a manifestation of genuine cordiality, presenting
its address to that effect in an elaborately wrought silver
casket.

At the governor's house they were received by
Lord and Lady Sandhurst, Lord Sandhurst being Gov-
ernor of Bombay, and ranking second in authority to
the governor-general.

It was here that Lord and Lady Curzon made their
first social appearance in India at a ball and reception
given in their honor. Beyond the fact that Lord
Curzon's wife was an American, prior to that night India
knew but little of her. Happy and beautiful, with the
added brilliancy which appreciation and success impart
to every woman, she made instantly an impression of
loveliness which in a few days had spread over India and
still prevails, — resting now, however, on a more en-
during basis.

The impression, in fact, created by both Lord and
Lady Curzon at Bombay paved the way to the enthu-
siasm with which they were received at Calcutta a few

days later.

281

FAMOUS AMERICAN BELLES

The city was richly decorated, the American flag
being everywhere conspicuously displayed amid evi-
dences of Oriental splendor. It has been estimated
that not less than one hundred thousand people wit-
nessed the magnificent spectacle of their reception at
the palace.

The imposing width of the double terrace of steps
that lead to the main entrance was covered with a rich
red carpet terminating in the green sward of the lawn,
where, in the magnificent uniform of the army forming
part of the military service of India, one hundred men
of the Calcutta Rifles and one hundred men of the
First Gloucester Regiment, in scarlet, with their band,
stood attention.

At the foot of the steps the Life-Guard, in gorgeous
red array, consisting of one hundred and twenty Indi-
ans selected for their fine size and physique, grouped
itself At the top, two colossal palms lifted their noble
branches, while the vine-clad balustrades added another
touch of color to the picturesque setting of the scene,
which was further enhanced by the presence of many
native chiefs and dignitaries in the splendor of their
rich attire.

In the distance the cannon of Fort Williams boomed
a mighty welcome to the new powers as they drove
under the great arch of the outer gate surmounted by
its massive lions. Beneath the limitless blue of a
tropical sky, with everywhere the luxuriant verdure of
a tropical landscape, this was the scene, reflecting both
the power of England and the magnificence and an-

2S2

MARY VICTORIA LEITER

tiqulty of the Orient, that greeted Lady Curzon, who
had opened her eyes on Hfe thirty years before in a new
city of a new world thousands of miles away.

To the vast concourse of Europeans and Orientals
who beheld Lord and Lady Curzon as they mounted
the steps and entered the palace they conveyed a sense
of entire satisfaction, so absolutely do they realize in
stature, bearing, and poise the conception of a noble
sovereignty. Lord Curzon is more than six feet in
height and of proportionate breadth, while his whole
manner denotes the vigor of youth, mentally as well
as physically.

It is a strange coincidence, first, that the Government
House at Calcutta should have been built by the Mar-
quis of Wellesley, who at a later period, during his
Governor-Generalship of Ireland, married, as already
stated, the beautiful Baltimorean, Mary Caton Patter-
son, and, in the second place, that it should have been
copied, with slight modification, from Lord Curzon's
ancestral home, Kedleston Hall. After a visit to the
latter place, Wellesley declared that if he ever had a
house to build he should take it for his model.

In 1799, during his term as Governor-General of
India, it fell to his lot to erect at Calcutta the viceregal
palace known as Government House, and he built it
on a plan well in keeping with the dignity of the great
European power which rules ov^r two-thirds of India.

The first two social events held at Government
House after the instalment of Lord Curzon as gov-
ernor-general were the levee on the 7th of January,

2S3

FAMOUS AMERICAN BELLES

1899, which was attended by sixteen hundred gentle-
men, and the drawing-room on the 1 2th of the same
month, at which Lady Curzon wore her viceregal hon-
ors with irresistible graciousness. After the presenta-
tions, which were made in the throne-room, Lord and
Lady Curzon standing in front of the magnificent gold
throne upon a velvet-covered dais, she went up into
the ball-room, which occupies the entire third floor of
the central portion of the palace, and which is said to
be one of the handsomest in the world, and there min-
gled among her guests with a grace as charming and
unaffected as if she were again hostess in either her
American or her English home instead of the representa-
tive of the Queen of England and Empress of India.

When we consider her exalted position and her un-
usual personality, the rapidity with which she has es-
tablished herself in the affections of the people all over
the empire ceases to be a matter of wonderment. The
good judgment and tact of both the viceroy and his
wife have prevented them from falling into the grave
error of some of their predecessors in showing a prefer-
ence for the European over the educated native ele-
ment. As a result. Lady Curzon's praises have been
proclaimed by the latter in the glowing language that
is peculiar to them as frequently as they have been by
the former. Ram Sharma, an Indian poet, referred to
her, in the course of some lines of welcome addressed
to Lord Curzon, as

*• A rose of roses bright,
A vision of embodied light."
284

Miss May Handy
From photograph by James L. Breese

MARY VICTORIA LEITER

Another native scribe, when she received the decoration
of the Imperial Order of the Crown of India, declared
her to be " like a diamond set in gold, or the full moon
in a clear autumnal sky."

Not only by her youth and beauty and her social
graces, however, has she endeared herself to the people
of India. With a high appreciation of the viceregal
position and of the duty owing to their subjects under
all circumstances, Lord and Lady Curzon last winter
made a tour of the plague-stricken districts of the em-
pire. Besides advising and making intelligent sugges-
tions to those who were working among the sufferers,
they in many cases personally provided for their care,
and by unselfish heroism bound the whole nation to
them by ties of profound gratitude and a tender per-
sonal affection, augmenting thereby India's loyalty to
the queen-empress.

The wives and families of India's viceroys have found
a broad field for the exercise of their benevolent tenden-
cies, and not a few have left here noble monuments to
the memory of their days in the great black empire.
Eden Gardens is one, the beautiful public park adjoining
the grounds of the viceregal residence and the gift of
Lord Auckland's sisters to the city of Calcutta. The
Dufferin Medical Mission is another, inaugurated by
Lady Dufferin during the governor-generalship of her
husband as a means of providing medical help for the
women of India.

A few weeks after her arrival in the empire Lady
Curzon presided at a meeting of the central committee

285

FAMOUS AMERICAN BELLES

of the DufFerin fund, and manifested a keen interest in
the noble charity.

It has within the last thirty years become customary
for the entire English government in India to spend
the six hot months of the year in Simla, the town in
the Himalayan hills whose singular natural and social
topography have become familiar in late years to
many English readers through Kipling's Indian tales.
The Foreign Office at London recently expended a large
sum of money in the erection of suitable buildings
there, including a new viceregal residence that is a vast
improvement over its predecessor, which was little more
than a cottage. It was perched on a precipitous crag,
and Lady Dufferin used to compare it to the ark
balanced on Mount Ararat, adding that in the rainy
season she herself felt like Mrs. Noah.

The villa at Simla and the palaces at Calcutta and
at Barrackpore on the river near the capital constitute
the trio of viceregal residences in which the Curzons
are passing the five years of their life in India. None
of them is a home in the meaning we give that word, —
a place of privacy and relaxation, — for each has its own
degree of state and formality. They live to-day in the
glare of the world, with no more seclusion than ever
falls either to " the head that wears a crown" or to
those to whom it delegates its power. The state that
encompasses them does not conceal the personality of
either, and both are full of interest.

Marrying a man whose life promised so much, Mary

Leiter has undoubtedly been a factor in the early cul-

286

MARY VICTORIA LEITER

mination of that promise. She is spoken of through-
out India with love and pride, and when Lord Curzon's
day comes to pass the govemment into other hands,
it may be that the empire will be placarded with signs,
as it was, says a recent historian, when Lord Ripon re-
tired, bearing a legend similar to that they bore then :
" We want more Curzons !"

287

NEW YORK AS A SOCIAL
CENTRE

THE women who, both at home and abroad, are
regarded as the leaders of American society in
these last days of the century are or have been,
almost without exception, at some time in their career
identified with New York. Though there is no city
in the United States that fills the central position which
Paris holds in reference to all France, and which Lon-
don occupies, at least socially, in England, the geo-
graphical position of New York, to a nation whose
progressive spirit inspires it with a keen interest in the
doings of the entire world, has given it a leading place,
and to the commanding position it holds in the finan-
cial life of the American people it undoubtedly owes
much of its prominence as a social centre.

Those who at present constitute its ruling element,
and who in the eyes of the country at large form the
unit of New York society, are, as a rule, the possessors
of enormous wealth. The elegance of their various
homes, the magnificence of their hospitalities, the lux-
urious state in which they travel, all tend to give them
an immense influence in a young country where such
a princely scale of existence was practically unknown
thirty-five years ago, and where there are many striving

for similar results.

2S8

: Catherine Duer^
(Mrs. Clarence Mackay)

NEW YORK AS A SOCIAL CENTRE

Women born of this class, and who possess, in addi-
tion to the advantages it bestows upon them, personal
gifts of an unusual order, have from the very outset of
their social career a remarkable fame and prestige. In
some instances they come of families who have been
distinguished in the life of New York since the days
when the homes of the people who made up its one
set were gathered about the battery and lower end of
the town, and when the division of its classes was the
natural one of condition, and not the arbitrary one
which its abnormal growth has entailed upon it in
recent years.

New York's belles in the early century were for
the most part native, and anything so remote as the
Pacific coast, whence comes one of its belles of the
present era, entered nobody's wildest dreams.

A Franklin flies his kite, a Fulton is born, a Morse
flashes his reverent thought fifty miles in the twinkling
of an eye, and lo ! the ages in which man crept and
groped have rolled from us. Distance has lost the
meaning it had a little more than a hundred years ago,
when Lady Kitty Duer was accounted one of the belles
of New York ; they come now from every section of
the country to add their charm to the life of the me-
tropolis.

Many of these beautiful women, moreover, are as
celebrated in European capitals as they are through-
out America, and it is difficult to estimate how much
of our fame in the eyes of other nations we owe to
them. To stand forth, however, in their own country
19 289

FAMOUS AMERICAN BELLES

as beings unusually gifted is quite as great a triumph
to-day as it was more than a hundred years ago.

" Your countrywoman, Mrs. Wolcott," said the min-
ister from England, admiring the beauty of the Con-
necticut statesman's wife, to an official of the young
government in the days when its capital was located in
New York, " would be admired even at St. James."

" Sir," replied the American, " she is admired even on
Litchfield Hill."

290

INDEX

Adams, Hannah, 150

Adams, John, 22

Adams, John Quincy, 74

Adams, Mrs. John, 14

Alabama, story of, 105

Albany, Duke of, 202

Allen, James Lane, 148

Alston, Joseph, 30, 38

Alston, Mrs. Joseph. See Theodosia

Burr
American Graces, 62, 66
Amory, William, 97
Andre, Major, 191
Ariosto, 116

Armstrong, General, 50
Armstrong, Vene P., 159
Astor, Mrs., iii

Atlantic Transport Company, 255
August, Tom, 179
Ayot, Alexis, 145

Bache, Mrs. Richard, 193

Bache, Richard, 193

Baily, Dr. Gamaliel, 214

Baker, Mrs. George W., 171

Baltimore, city of, 39

Bard, Dr., 29

Barney, Commodore, 44

Barton, Dr. Benjamin, 87

Barton, Mrs. Thomas Pennant. See

Cora Livingston
Barton, Thomas Pennant, 87
Bateman, Abraham, 254
Bayard, Hon, Thomas F., 271
Beaconsfield, Lord, 248

Beale, General, 88

Beauregard, General, 234

"Beauvoir," 275

Belief ontaine Cemetery, 263

Bentham, Jeremy, 19

Benton, Jessie, 123

Benton, Thomas Hart, 123, 125, 126

Bernhardt, Sarah, 200

Bingham, Mrs. William, 192

Bingham, William, 192

Bladensburg duel, 85

Blaine, James G., 268

Blenheim Palace, 244

Blennerhassett, 34

Bodisco, Baron, 127

Bolin, Lieutenant-Governor, 92

Bonaparte, Jerome, 28, 43, 44, 64

Bonaparte, Jerome Napoleon, 53, 59

Bonaparte, Louis Napoleon, 59

Bonaparte, Madame Jerome, 39, 67.

See Elizabeth Patterson
Bonaparte, Napoleon, 42, 43, 48, 51,

55, 67
Bonaparte, Pauline, 56, 58
Bonsteller, Baron, 57
Borghese, Princess. See Pauline

Bonaparte
Boston Library, 88
Bourne, Sylvanus, 53
Bradley-Martin, Mrs., 255
Brant, Indian Chief, 29
Brattle, Thomas, 92
Bremer, Frederika, 108, 115
Bright, Mr. John, 247
British Society, 239
Browning, Mrs., 114
Buchanan, James, 161, 164, 167, 170,

174 181, 232

291

INDEX

Burdett-Coutts, Baroness, 253

Burdett-Coutts, Mr., 253

Burns, Davy, 12

Burns, Marcia, 11

Burr, Aaron, 13, 15, 18, 19, 21, 22, 26,

32
Burr, Madam, 267
Burr, Rev. Aaron, 28
Burr, Theodosia, 18, 48

Cabell, Lizzie, 230

Calderon, Madame de la Barca,

lOI

Calhoun, John C, 16

Calhoun, Mrs. John C, 75

Calverts, the, 14

Camber, Miss, 103

" Canonchet," 219

Carlton House Terrace, 276

Carmichael, Ann, 231

Carroll, Charles, 41, 61, 63, 150, 191,

264
Carroll, Daniel, 12, 14
Carroll, John, 61

Carroll, John, Archbishop, 46, 64
Carroll, Kitty, 61
Carroll, Mary, 61
Carucci's, 86
Caton, Elizabeth, 62, 68
Caton, Emily, 62, 68
Caton, Louisa, 62, 65, 68
Caton, Mary, 62, 264
Caton, Richard, 61, 62
Caton Sisters, 61
Chamberlain, Hon. Joseph, 273
Chamberlain, Jennie, 278
Chamberlain, Mrs. Joseph, 255
Chase, Kate, 206
Chase, Salmon P., 207-210, 212, 214,

215, 220, 223
Chase, Samuel, 45
Chatsworth House, 252
Chevalier, Sally, 118, 119
Chew, Harriet, 191
Chew, Margaret, 191

Churchill, Lady Randolph. See

Jennie Jerome
Churchill, Lord Randolph, 240, 244,
248, 250, 255

Churchill, Winston, 252

Cincinnati, site of, 195

" City of New York," steamship, 250

Clarke, James Freeman, loi

Clay, Henry, 82, 108, no

Clemmer, Mary, 163

Cleveland, Mrs., 162, 274

Cleveland, President, 270

Clinton, Governor De Witt, 73

Clintons, the, 20

Clymer, Dr., 271

Clj^mer, Miss May, 271

Columbia College, 15

Conkling, Roscoe, 214

Curzon, Baroness. See Mary Vic-
toria Leiter

Curzon, Lord, 264, 265, 272, 273, 275

Custer, General, 160

Custis, Nellie, 191

Custis, widow, 12

Cutts, Ad&le, 175

Cutts, James Madison, 175, 186

Cutts, Richard, 176, 178

Dallas, Alexander J., 46

Davezac, Major August, 83

Davis, Jefferson, 163

Decatur, Mrs., 84, 85

Decatur Residence, 84

De Stael, Madame, 57

De Visme, Miss, 21

DeVisme, Mrs., 20

Devonshire, Duchess of, 253

Dix, Mrs., 145

Dix, Senator, 135

" Doughoregan," 62

Douglas, Mrs. Stephen A. See

Adele Cutts
Douglas, Stephen A., 175, 180, 182,

184
Downs, George F., 159

292

INDEX

Downs, Mrs. George F. See Sallie

Ward
Duddington Manor, 14
Duer, Lady Kitty, 289
Dufferin, Lady, 285, 286
Dufferin, Lord, 2S5
Dufferin Medical Mission, 285
Dundas, Hon. Mr., 57

Eaton, General John H., 75, 78
Eaton, Mrs. John H. See Margaret

O'Neill
Eden Gardens, 285
Eden Park, 197
" Edgewood," 225, 226, 228
Edwards, Jonathan, 28
Electoral Commission, 260
Elgin, Lord, 278
Ellis, Colonel Thomas Harding,

121
Ellis, Mrs. Thomas Harding. See

Fanny Taylor
Emerson, Ralph Waldo, 266
Endicott, Miss Mary, 273
England, Bishop, 66
England, Queen of, 116, 239, 255, 278,

284
English, Miss, school of, 130

Federal Street Theatre, 91
Fife, Earl of, 243
Fillmore, Millard, 116
Five o'clock tea, 95
Flournoy, Miss, 149
Fox, Charles James, 253
France, Emperor of, 116
France, Prince Imperial of, 242
Franklin, Benjamin, 193
Franks, David, 191
Franks, Miss Rebecca, 190
Fremont, John C, 123, 130, 143
Fremont, Mrs. John C. See Jessie
Benton

Frewen, Moreton, 246
Fuller, Margaret, 93
Fulton, Robert, 108, 289

Gallatin, Albert, 35
Gait, William, 119
Garde, de la, Count, 146
Garniss, Katherine, 209
Garrison, William Lloyd, 98
Gary, General, 234
Gilpin, Hon. Henry D., 200
Gilpin, Mrs. Henry D., 196
Gordon, General, 234
Gordon, Sir John Watson, 173
Gortschakoff, 57
Government House, 283
Grant, General, 223, 261
Greeley, Horace, 221
Green, Timothy, 36
Greenmount Cemetery, 60
Greenough, Horatio, 17
Gutherz, Carl, 263

Hall, Captain Basil, 57

Hamilton, Alexander, 13, 15, 20, 23

32
Hamilton, Andrew, 191
Hampton, General Wade, 234
Handy, May, 233
Harper, Mary, 150
Harris, Miss, 186, 187
Harrison, Archibald Morgan, 120
Harrison, Benjamin, 121
Harrison, Wiliiam Henry, 122, 131
Harte, Bret, 146
Haxall, Mrs. Philip, 235
Hayes, Rutherford B., 260, 261
Hayward, Mrs., seminary of, 72
Hazeltine, Captain William B., 258
Hazeltine, Nellie, 257
Henry, James Buchanan, 171
Hervey, Sir Felton Bathurst, 65
Hobbes, John Oliver, 254

293

INDEX

Holme, Thomas, 195

Holmes, Oliver Wendell, 63

Hood, General, 234

Hosack, Dr., 29

Howard, Colonel John Eager, 45,

191
Howe, Lord, 278
Hoyt, William Sprague, 222
Hughes- Hallett, Colonel, 204
Hughes-Hallett, Mrs. See Emilie

Schaumburg
Hunt, Dr., 158
Hunt, John, 158
Huygens, 76
Huygens, Mrs., 76

India, Viceroy of, 264

Inglis, Fanny, 101

Ireland, Governor-General of, 254

Ireland, Vicereine of, 264

Irving, Washington, 34, 108, 109

Jackson, Andrew, 16, 74,82, 105, 125,

128
James, Henry, 254
Jefferson, Joseph, in
Jefferson, Thomas, 15, 18, 19, 34
Jerome, Jennie, 239
Jerome, Leonard, 241
Jerome, Mrs. Leonard, 242
Jockey Club, 241
Johnson, Governor of Maryland,

12
Johnson's Band, 193
Johnston, General Joe, 234
Johnston, Henry Elliott, 174
Johnston, Mrs. Henry Elliott. See

Harriet Lane
Johnston, Sir Henry, 191
Junot, General, 51
Junot, Madame, 43, 51

Kedleston Hall, 283
Key, Barton, 233
King, Preston, 145
Krudner, Baron, 76

Lafayette, General, 84, 106, 195

La Grange, Madame, 202

Lamartine, 104

Lane, Elliot, 164

Lane, Harriet, 161

Lane, Mary, 167

Lawrence, Bigelow, 155, 156

Lawrence, Hon. Abbott, 155

Le Camus, Alexander, 46, 54

Leeds, Duke of, 68

Leiter, Joseph, 267

Leiter, Levi Z., 267

Leiter, Mary Victoria, 264

Le Vert, Dr. Claud, no

Le Vert, Dr. Henry S., no

Le Vert, Madame. See Octavia

Walton
Lewis, Mrs. Nellie Custis, 121
Leyland, Naylor, Sir Herbert, 278
Lincoln, Abraham, 124, 141, 143, 173,

183-185, 215, 220
Livingston, Chancellor, 81
Livingston, Cora, 80
Livingston, Edward, 29, 81
Livingston, Mrs. Edward, 16
Livingston, Robert, 48, 50
Livingstons, The, 20
Louis Philippe, 28
Louisville Guard, 154
Louisville Legion, 154
Lucas, Charles, 88
Ludlow, Israel, 212
Ludlow, Sarah, 212
Lyons, Mrs. James, 179

Macfarland, James Edward, 170
Mactavish, John, 68
Madison, James, 35, 178

294

INDEX

Madison, Mrs. James, 35, 178
" Maine," hospital ship, 255
Malvern College, 250
Marlborough, Duchess of, 240
Marlborough, Duke of, 243, 247, 256
Marshall, Emily, 90
Marshall, John, 13, 33
Marshall, Josiah, 91
Marshall, Lieutenant Isaac, 92
Martin, Luther, 13, 34
Mary Institute, 257
Mason, John Y., 122, 270
McAllister, Ward, 269
McCall, Mr. and Mrs. John A., 236
McDowell, Colonel James, 127
McFarlane, Thomas Holme, 195
McLean, Mr. and Mrs. John R.,

275
Middleton, Arthur, 16
Montgomery Place, 87
" Montplaisir," 204, 205
Moore, Tom, 15, 56
Moreau, Madame, 81
Morgan, Lady, 41, 56, 57
Morgan, Sir Charles, 57
Mornington, Earl of, 66
Morse, S. F. B., 129, 289
Mount Vernon, 172

N

New Orleans, society of, 83
New York as a Social Centre, 288

Octagon House, 14

O'Neale, Miss Ellen, 177

O'Neill, Margaret, 69

O'Neill, William, 70

Otis, Harrison Gray, 94

Otis, Mrs. Harrison Gray, 116

Otis, Mrs. William Foster. See

Emily Marshall
Otis, William Foster, 100
Ould, Mattie, 230, 262, 263
Ould, Robert, 232

Page, Colonel James, 198

Page, Miss, 197

Page, Stephen, 197

Page, Thomas Nelson, 120

Paget, Mrs. Arthur, 255

Paramore, Frederick W., 263

Paramore, Mrs. Frederick W. See

Nellie Hazeltine
Paramore, J. W., 263
Park, Dr., school of, 93
Parker, Gilbert, 254
Parker, Miss Hetty, 166, 168
Parsons, Colonel Richard, 216
Pascault, Miss Henrietta, 44
Patterson, Elizabeth, 39, 64
Patterson, Mrs. (Mary Caton), 264
Patterson, Robert, 49, 64, 264
Patterson, William, 40, 47, 48, 54, 64
Patti, Adelina, 200
Payne, Anna, 176
Penal Laws, 88
Penn, Imogene, 179
Perry, Commodore, 216
Piatt, Donn, 220
Picket, General, 234
Pierce, Franklin, 181
Pinckney, Edward C, 71
Pitt, William, 53, 253
Poe, Edgar Allen, 71
Polk, Mrs., 167
Polk, President, 167
Pope Pius, 52
Portland, Duke and Duchess of, 279,

280
Prevost, Colonel, 20
Prevost, Mrs., 21
Primrose League, 246, 247
Princeton College, 28

Quincy, Josiah, 80

Ralph, Julian, 271
Randall, Samuel, 260
Randolph, John, 15, 33, 74, 126

295

INDEX

Reed, Thomas B., 176
Reid, Whitelaw, 254
Republican Party, origin of, 143
Review, Anglo-Saxon, 254
Rewbell, General, 44, 45
•' Richmond Hill," 21, 29, 31. 32
Ridgley, Charles, 63
Rives, Alexander, 118
Robinson, Miss Nancy, 63
Rosebery Cabinet, 275
Rosebery, Lord, 254
Rucker, Miss, 167
Rush, Madam, in, 198
Rush, Richard, 65
Rutland, Duke of, in

S

Salisbury, Lord, 248, 265
Sampoyo, Duke de, 78
Sandhurst, Lord and Lady, 281
Sargent (artist), 256
Scarsdale, Baron, 272
Schaumburg, Colonel Bartholomew,

194
Schaumburg, Emilie, 190
Schaumburg-Lippe, Princess, 197
Schoolcraft, Mrs. Oliver. See Mattie

Ould
Schoolcraft, Oliver, 236
Schurz, Carl, 221
Secaneh, Indian Chief, 195
Shippen, Margaret, 192
Shubrick, Admiral, 271
Sickles, General Daniel, 233
Slidell, Mr., 109
Smalcalden, Princess of, 54
Smith, Eliza Ann, 209
Smith, General Samuel, 47
Smith, Rev. Dr. Mackay, 273
Spear, Dorcas, 41
Spear, Elizabeth, 164
Sprague, Governor William, 217
Sprague, Kate Chase, 187
Sprague, Mrs. William. See Kate

Chase
Stafford, Baron, 68

Stanton, Edwin M., 233

State Fencibles (Pennsylvania), 198

Stewart, Gilbert, 254

Sturgis, Russell, 93

Sullivan, John, 169

Susahena, Indian Princess, 195

Sweetenham, Sir Frank, 254

Talbot, Bishop, 273
Tallahassee, naming of, 106
Talleyrand, 28, 57
Tayloes, the, 14
Taylor, Fanny, 118
Tennyson, Alfred, 170
Tilden, Samuel J., 259, 260
Timberlake, John B., 73
Timberlake, Virginia, 78
Triplett, Mary, 230, 235
Tureau, General, 48, 51
Turpin, Miss Sarah, 233

U

Union Tavern (Georgetown), 70

Van Buren, Martin, 76, 77, 82, 127

Vanderbilt, Cornelius, 108

Van Ness, Ann, 16

Van Ness, John Peter, 15

Van Ness, Mrs. John Peter. See

Marcia Burns
Van Rensselaers, the, 20
Vaughan, British Minister, 76
Visitation Convent, 168
Volney, 28, 29

W

Wales, Prince of, 172, 173, I99» 252
Wales, Princess Louise of, 243
Wales, Princess of, 252
Walker, Miss Sally, 104
Walton, George, 103, 106
Walton, Octavia, 102

296

INDEX

Ward, Artemus, 220

Ward, Robert J., 149

Ward, Sallie, 148

Warwick, Abram, 118

Washington City Orphan Asylum,

Washington, George, 11, 12, 22, 70
Washington, George Steptoe, 176
Washington, Martha, 121
Waterman, Priscilla, 92
Watson, Sally, 118
Wayne, Anthony, 160
Webster, Daniel, 13, 78, 82, 90
Welbeck Abbey, 279, 280
Wellesley, Lady, 264, 265
Wellesley, Marquis of, 66, 264, 283
Wellesley, Richard, 66
Wellington, Duke of, 65, 67
West, Mrs. George Cornwallis, 255.

See Jennie Jerome
Westphalia, King of, 54
" Wheatland," 165, 173, I74
White House, the, 162, 163
Wilcox, Mary Donalson, 87

William IV., 65, 67
Williams, General Robert, 187
Williams, Miss (Baroness Bodisco),

127
Williams, Miss Susan Mary, 59
Williams, Mrs. Robert, See Adele

Cutts
Willing, Ann. See Mrs. William

Bingham
Willis, N. P., 98, 99
Wolcott, Mrs., 290
Wolf, Sir H. Drummond, 246
Wollstonecraft, Mary, 24
"Woodlands," 191
Wortley, Lady Emeline Stuait, 107,

III
Wurtemburg, King of, 54
Wurtemburg, Prince of, 57
Wurtemburg, Princess Catherine of,
54,58

Yorktown, Battle of, 103
Young, General, 231

THE END

297

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